This short video showshow to repair a crashed table in your wordpress mysql database, as well as how to fix MySQL table overheads, just in case your blog ever suffers one like mine did..

Video Transcription

Hi, this is a quick video from blogtactics.com. You will find it on blogtactics.com on the videos page, along with all the other blogging videos I have done. Now this particular video is about sequel database overheads and sequel database table crashes. Why I am doing such video? Well, earlier today, my blog went down. Apparently, my host was undergoing an attack and while they were fixing it, one of my tables—database tables that actually holds the data forward was crashed and it was having a problem. So when I went to my blog earlier, instead of looking like this, which is what it normally looks like, it looked like this, which is the Word Press install page. That was coming up with this page because the WP options table where all the options for you Would Press blog is stored had become corrupted basically. So even if I try to use this install, it would come up with an error saying “Word Press database error”. Table WP options is marked as “crashed” and should be repaired. If you have had this happen, it may not be that you get this page because you may have a different database table that has crashed, because there are a few different database tables used by Word Press. The important bit is if it says “marked as crashed and should be repaired”, then I am going to show you what you need to do. Now, you need to log on to your C panel, to your hosting. I can only show you how to do this with C panel. If you use a different host, you have to ask them how to do it. You log on to C panel for your host, and you go to “my sequel databases”. It may look different to that, depending on which theme you used, but I just use my sequel database as it will be one of the options available, and then you scroll down to the bottom where it says “php: my admin”, click on that and it will open up in a new screen which will just take a moment to open up. Once “php: my admin” comes up, this is the screen that you will see. What you need to do is click on the database name itself, so click on this and it will bring up a new page. Basically, what this does is bring up a list of the tables in the database. The one I was always having a problem with today was WP options, and this line here appeared green and it just said “in use”. So there is a problem with it. What I needed to do is simply tick on this box here and scroll down to the bottom, and there is an option. If I scroll down a bit further—sorry, I could not find the option there. It is under this drop-down menu here and you need to choose “repair table”. Now, there is a point about—what I am going to do is I do not need to repair the WP options table in this case. Let us scroll back up, it is working correctly. However, please scroll across; you will see that there is an extra column at the end here that says “overhead”. Overhead is basically where a table is starting to become a bit messed up or defragmented, and you need to repair it anyway. So we will actually pick this table here. If I scroll back across to the WP options, and there is another one there that also has an overhead, which is this one. So I will scroll back across the “post-media”. I will take both of those and I will run the repair option on them. Now that overhead basically means the tables are starting to get a little bit messed up, and it is worth once every few weeks or once a month or so, checking to see if you need to run that option. Run the repair. It just takes a few moments to do, so come back once it is finished. This is the screen that you will see once it is finished. It only takes 10 to 15 seconds. It obviously depends on the size of the table that you are working with, but this only took me 10 to 15 seconds. What we are looking for is “repair status okay”, so it is all done and it is all happy. You should not need to do that very often, but it worth checking on a regular basis, every a couple of weeks, every month, something like that. Obviously, it depends partly on how much traffic you are getting. If you to get a lot traffic to your blog, it is more likely to happen more often. We close down php: my admin, go back to Blog Tactics. This video will be on blogtactics.com on the videos page. I will also post link to a post where it explains more about “my sequel table overheads”, and also post a link to the WP back-up plug in to make sure that you are backing up on a regular basis as well. I hope you find this useful. Thank you very much.