Discontinued WordPress plugin ‘Post Archival in the Internet Archive’ increases the TTFB significantly

There are a few WordPress plugins around that make snapshots of new or newly edited posts in the Internet Archive. Among them I considered Post Archival in the Internet Archive the best, primarily because it made snapshots of outlinks, too. Unfortunately the developer has decided to discontinue it. The plugin page is empty as it is populated through a readme.txt file in the plugin repository that is not anymore. As far as I remember there was a blog post disclosing that the developer quits WordPress at all but the entire domain www.geeky.software has gone. The last supported WordPress release was 4.9.4.

If you have it still active, be warned: I experienced massive server load through it. The corresponding error in the error log looks like this:

AH01071: Got error 'PHP message: WordPress database error Got a packet bigger than 'max_allowed_packet' bytes for query UPDATE %prefix%wp_options SET option_value = 'a:63865:{i:1571880025;a:1:{s:29:\"wppaiapi_handle_post_archival\";a:4:{s:32:\"2fdcc9d3a16fa1bc0fc3f3129caeab94\";a:2:{s:8:\"schedule\";b:0;s:4:\"args\";a:3:{i:0;i:1231;i:1;s:57:\"https://ib-clone.ingram-braun.net/erga/2019/10/23/developer-tools/\";i:2;b:1;}}s:32:\"292e54697d8c27ae23f9992f80b5a27f\";a:2:{s:8:\"schedule\";b:0;s:4:\"args\";a:3:{i:0;i:1232;i:1;s:56:\"https://ib-clone.ingram-braun.net/erga/2019/10/23/research-tools/\";i:2;b:1;}}s:32:\"264a25fcd5976d9c325837a95e3ef8fd\";a:2:{s:8:\"schedule\";b:0;s:4:\"args\";a:3:{i:0;i:1233;i:1;s:53:\"https://ib-clone.ingram-braun.net/erga/2019/10/23/chess-tools/\";i:2;b:1;}}s:32:\"dfcc4ab746b5ca280a78545bd60a16cb\";a:2:{s:8:\"schedule\";b:0;s:4:\"args\";a:3:{i:0;i:1234;i:1;s:49:\"https://ib-clone.ingram-braun.net/erga/2019/10/23/service/\";i:2;b:1;}}}}i:1571880027;a:1:{s:29:\"wppaiapi_handle_post_archival\";a:7:{s:32:\"ad3ff86e20d8f6691543dae…PHP message: WordPress database error Got a packet bigger than 'max_allowed_packet' bytes for query UPDATE %prefix%wp_options SET option_value = 'a:63865:{i:1571880025;a:1:{s:29:\"wppaiapi_handle_post_archival\";a:4:{s:32:\"2fdcc9d3a16fa1bc0fc3f3129caeab94\";a:2:{s:8:\"schedule\";b:0;s:4:\"args\";a:3:{i:0;i:1231;i:1;s:57:\"https://ib-clone.ingram-braun.net/erga/2019/10/23/developer-tools/\";i:2;b:1;}}s:32:\"292e54697d8c27ae23f9992f80b5a27f\";a:2:{s:8:\"schedule\";b:0;s:4:\"args\";a:3:{i:0;i:1232;i:1;s:56:\"https://ib-clone.ingram-braun.net/erga/2019/10/23/research-tools/\";i:2;b:1;}}s:32:\"264a25fcd5976d9c325837a95e3ef8fd\";a:2:{s:8:\"schedule\";b:0'

This error is very time consuming. It took up to 18 seconds which added to the TTFB (time to first byte) – one of the crucial Google ranking criteria! Alas, it is not sufficient to remove the plugin. I found hundreds of wppaiapi_handle_post_archival and ten thousands of wppaiapi_handle_link_archival events in the cron schedule. These must be removed. Good luck, there is an easy remedy: Install the plugin WP Crontrol. It enables an editor for the scheduled events. There you can delete all events of the same name at once.