Understanding the role of built-in database tables
The WordPress database structure is designed to store a minimum amount of data required for core features. Therefore, developers need to have a thorough understanding of the existing tables in order to use them effectively to build flexible websites. Let's take a look at the entity relationship diagram of the latest WordPress versions:
As may notice, all the existing tables don't have more than one or two relationships with other tables, and hence understanding and working with the database becomes a simpler task. Now, we are going to look at each database table with important columns, its role, and how it works with other tables. You need to refer to the preceding diagram to visualize the points in our discussion.
Posts-related database tables
Three database tables are directly involved with posts and six tables handle posts-related data. Many of the existing WordPress sites are either basic sites with a few pages, or blogs with hundreds of...