#702 by installs

WP-DBManager

Manages your WordPress database.

View on WordPress.org Plugin website Support forum

Active installs: 50,000+; #702 of 1,000
Downloads, all time: 3.2M; 3,183,385
Downloads, 30 days: 8.5K; 2.8K in the last 7
Rating: 4.4 / 5; 95 reviews
Last updated: 3 months ago; Aug 9, 2026
Version: 4.0.0; 40 releases

Upkeep and compatibility

Last updated	August 9, 2026Updated in the last 3 months
Tested up to	WordPress 7.0.8Older than WordPress 7.1.4, the current release
Needs WordPress	6.8 or newer
Needs PHP	8.2 or newer
First published	January 3, 2006
Support, last two months	0 of 1 threads resolved (0%)

Reviews

4.4 / 5 from 95 reviews

Reviews by star rating
5 stars		78
4 stars		3
3 stars		2
2 stars		0
1 star		12

Downloads, last 30 days

Low 86 a dayHigh 1.2K a day

What the author says it does

WP-DBManager looks after the database behind your site: it backs it up, restores it, optimizes and repairs it, empties or drops tables and runs queries you write, all from wp-admin rather than from a shell or phpMyAdmin. Backups, optimization and repair can be left to run on a schedule, and the backup can be emailed to you when it finishes.

Donations

I spent most of my free time creating, updating, maintaining and supporting these plugins, if you really love my plugins and could spare me a couple of bucks, I will really appreciate it. If not feel free to use it without any obligations.

Usage

Securing The Backup Folder

A database backup contains everything, including your users table. Anyone who can guess a backup file name can download the lot, so the folder must not be served over HTTP.

The reliable option, on any server: set Path To Backup under WP-Admin -> Database -> Settings to a folder outside your web root, for example /var/www/example.com/backup-db when WordPress lives in /var/www/example.com/public_html. Nothing served, nothing to configure.

If the folder has to stay inside the web root:

Apache — move htaccess.txt from Folder: wp-content/plugins/wp-dbmanager to Folder: wp-content/backup-db/.htaccess
IIS — move Web.config.txt from Folder: wp-content/plugins/wp-dbmanager to Folder: wp-content/backup-db/Web.config

The opening of the plugin's own description. The full text, installation notes and changelog are on its WordPress.org page.

Questions the author answers

My database is not backed up / My backup file is 0Kb

Go to WP-Admin -> Database -> Backup DB. The top of that page checks the backup folder, both binary paths, and whether passthru(), system() and exec() are available, and tells you which one is the problem.
The usual answer is that the host does not allow mysqldump to be run at all, or that the path under WP-Admin -> Database -> Settings is wrong. Your host can tell you the correct path.

My gzipped backup file is about 20 bytes

That is an empty gzip stream: mysqldump failed and produced nothing, and gzip compressed the nothing.
Before 3.0.0 the plugin could not tell. mysqldump | gzip reports gzip’s exit status rather than mysqldump’s, and the file it leaves behind is not empty, so the check for a zero byte backup never fired. The file was renamed with a checksum and, if you had backup e-mails on, sent to you.

I clicked Optimize (or Repair) and it says “No Tables Selected”

From 3.0.0 these screens no longer tick every table for you. Tick the tables you want — or the box in the header row to take the lot — then pick Optimize from Bulk actions and press Apply.
The old screens pre-selected everything, so a single click acted on the whole database whether or not that was what you meant. Selecting first is the WordPress convention and is a good deal harder to do by accident.

The Database pages say “Sorry, you are not allowed to access this page”

Your bookmark points at the old address. In 3.0.0 the screens moved from admin.php?page=wp-dbmanager/database-backup.php to admin.php?page=wp-dbmanager-backup, and likewise for the others.
Reach them from the Database menu in the sidebar and re-bookmark. Nothing has been removed.

What is the difference between WP-DBManager and WP-DB-Backup?

WP-DBManager uses the mysqldump application to generate the backup and the mysql application to restore it, via the shell.
WP-DB-Backup uses PHP to generate the backup. In some cases WP-DB-Backup will work better for you because it requires fewer permissions — not every host allows mysqldump/mysql to be run directly.

My backup folder is reported as visible to the public

Anyone who guesses a backup file name can download your entire database, including your users table, so this is worth fixing rather than hiding.
The most reliable fix on any server is to move the folder outside your web root — set Path To Backup under WP-Admin -> Database -> Settings to something like /var/www/example.com/backup-db. Nothing is served, so there is nothing to protect.

Latest changelog entry

4.0.0

FIXED: Changing the backup folder on the settings screen left the new folder unprotected. The .htaccess, the Web.config, the silence-is-golden index.php and the 0750 were only ever written on activation and from the “try to fix” notice, so backups were then written to a bare directory — and the shipped default lives inside wp-content, which is served. A dump contains the users table

Screenshots

First 4 of 8, from WordPress.org.

Database, the server it runs on and the size of every table
Backup DB, which checks the paths and the folder before it offers to run
Manage Backup DB, every backup with its checksum, date and size
Optimize DB, which reclaims the space MySQL still holds after deletions

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Where this page's numbers come from

Read from the WordPress.org plugin API on October 31, 2026, when WordPress 7.1.4 was the current release. WordPress.org rounds active installs into buckets. These are the directory's figures, not my verdict, and I haven't tested this plugin. The author takes donations at their donate page.