Hello,
During a read-only database audit of our Joomla 6.1.2 website, we found a large and continuously growing number of rows in the Gridbox Store cart table.
The online store is currently still under preparation. It is publicly accessible, but it does not yet contain any products and is not currently being used for sales. We plan to add products and start actively using the store soon, so we would like to resolve any cart retention or database growth issues before launch.
Current database findings:
- #__gridbox_store_cart: 188,986 rows
- Rows with user_id = 0: 188,905
- Rows with a non-zero user_id: 81, belonging to only 2 distinct user IDs
- All rows have empty country and region values
- All rows have promo_id = 0
- #__gridbox_store_cart_products: 0 rows
- #__gridbox_store_cart_attachments_map: 0 rows
- #__gridbox_store_orders: 0 rows
- #__gridbox_store_order_customer_info: 0 rows
The cart table contained 184,283 rows on July 21, 2026, and 188,986 rows on July 26, 2026. This is an increase of 4,703 rows in five days, despite the store having no products and not yet being actively used.
The main #__gridbox_store_cart table contains no creation or modification timestamp, so we cannot determine the age of individual rows. We also do not want to delete anything based only on assumptions, because a browser cookie or another Gridbox mechanism might still reference a cart ID even when there are no related product, attachment or order records.
Could you please clarify the following?
1. Is this continuous accumulation of empty gridbox_store_cart rows expected Gridbox Store behaviour?
2. What action or request creates a new cart row when the store has no products and no item has been added to a cart?
3. Does simply visiting a publicly accessible Gridbox Store or another website page create a cart row?
4. Does Gridbox include a built-in cart garbage-collection or retention mechanism?
5. Is it safe to remove rows that have no matching records in the cart products, attachments, orders or order customer information tables?
6. Can anonymous rows with user_id = 0 be removed safely, or could this invalidate active browser carts?
7. Is there an officially supported SQL cleanup procedure, Gridbox maintenance tool or recommended retention period?
8. If cleanup is supported, should it be performed in batches rather than as a single deletion?
9. Is this behaviour expected to change or receive an automated cleanup mechanism in Gridbox 3?
No database changes have been made. We have current backups and will first test any recommended procedure on a local or staging copy before applying it to production.
Because we intend to start adding products and actively using the store soon, we would like to establish a supported cleanup and retention procedure beforehand. We would appreciate a vendor-supported solution that preserves active carts, customer accounts, wishlists, checkout functionality and future order history.
Thank you.
