Master the wp-config.php database block: DB_CHARSET, DB_COLLATE, WP_ALLOW_REPAIR, MYSQL_CLIENT_FLAGS, a custom db.php drop-in for TLS pinning, and WP-CLI checks to verify encoding and SSL on every connection.
Learn how to add custom database indexes to wp_postmeta in WordPress. This step-by-step guide covers diagnosing slow queries with EXPLAIN, adding meta_value indexes, automating with an mu-plugin, and benchmarking query performance improvements of 80% or more.
