What the hell does that mean?   Googling “speeding up WordPress”, I see people saying things like “Well, if you’ve already optimized your tables, then try this…”  After a bit more searching I finally figured it out.   Here is a step by step procedure to optimize your WordPress installation through your website control panel.  If your control panel is different, or you don’t have one, then you are S.O.L. until someone comments an easier way to do this.  BTW, I take no responsibility for you messing up your blog either.  As every how-to article says, back up your WordPress installation before trying this.  (Like you’d even know how to reinstall WordPress from that backup.)

1. 1.  In your website control panel, probably in the database section, you should see an icon for phpMyAdmin.  Click it.
2. 2.  Once it opens, in the left sidebar you will see a list of databases, one for each WordPress installation.  Click on the one you want to optimize.
3. The database will open showing all the tables included under WordPress.  Don’t worry, it scares me too.  Under all those tables there should be a single link saying ” Check All / Uncheck All / Check tables having overhead”.  Click on “Check tables having overhead”.
4. If no check boxes get checked, you are finished; close your browser.  More likely, you do have one or two boxes above now checked.  Next to where you just clicked, there will be a drop down menu that says “With selected:”.  Choose “Optimize tables”. 
5. That’s it, you are done.  On the following screen you should see a little box saying your table name, status OK.

My website seemed to load faster considering I had never done this before.   For good measure, I tried the above procedure on 3 more blogs.  Everything went fine.  It seems pretty safe as long as you don’t play around with anything else.

Like to live dangerously?  Then I recommend the following plugin.   Clean Options, which claims to find orphaned options and allow for their removal from the wp_options table.  Translated, that means it goes through your plugins, and deletes any crap left over from stuff you removed long ago.  Use it before optimizing so you don’t have to do that twice.  Be careful with this plugin.  Do not delete everything it finds.  Only delete what you recognize as something you deleted from the plugins folder.  Just deactivating a plugin and leaving it in the folder doesn’t get rid of it.   If you mess up and a plugin stops working properly, you will have to deactivate that plugin, and then reactivate it.