Dougal Campbell would like to suggest something to all of the WordPress and WordPress plugin developers out there to help make things clearer - namspacing for the options in the database.

I happened to be poking around in my database a while ago, particularly in the WordPress 'options' table for this blog. There's an awful lot of cruft hanging around from old plugins that I don't use anymore. I cleaned a few things out, but something hit me as I was perusing all those options: I can't always tell which options belong(ed) to which plugins, themes, or to the WordPress core.

He suggests that plugin developers use some sort of namespacing in their column/table names to help keep things split out a bit more from the core and from other plugins. This keeps those maintaining the site from having to dig into the code just to figure out what's associated. He lists a few advantages and disavantages to the approach, including both making it easir to find them but adding complexity in their use.