wp_options is a MySQL database table in which several WordPress configuration “options” are stored (for example, site URL, site name, admin email, etc).
Plugins often store their settings in this table, too, and as a result, sometimes this table can be a good place for us to start when we are performing WordPress Optimizations.
When uninstalling plugins and themes which store items in this table, its worth spending a minute to remove old options.
In addition to plugin settings, sites which do not use object caching will also have transients stored in the wp_options table.
Some problems are first world problems. Other problems are big WordPress problems. Slow WordPress Admin? Slow uncached pageloads? We deal with some big WordPress customers, and often their sites can become slow. There’s sometimes a myth floating around that “WordPress doesn’t scale” or, more specifically, that “WooCommerce doesn’t scale” but there’s a reason I call …
