I guess you are aware of what is plugin. That’s why I am not going into that detail. In this article, I will discuss how you can uninstall a WordPress plugin. There might be multiple reasons to uninstall a plugin.
However, here are some of the common reasons for uninstalling the plugins:
- The plugin is not working as per your expectation.
- The plugin is not secure for your website.
- It is not in your use now.
- You installed it for experiment purposes or temporarily.
There might be your own reason behind that you want to uninstall a WordPress plugin. Now, let’s discuss how you can uninstall it from the dashboard.
Steps to Uninstall a WordPress Plugin
Simply, you login into your WordPress website and go to the dashboard. Click on Plugins on the left sidebar menu. After it, you will be redirected to the plugin area where you can see your all installed plugin.
Select the plugin that you want to uninstall.
First of all, click on Deactivate and your plugin will get deactivated. After it, a Delete button will appear below the deactivated plugin.
Now, you just need to click on the delete button and confirm to uninstall a WordPress plugin. After this process, your selected plugin will be uninstalled.
But do you think it is the complete process? Let’s see it.
There are some plugins completely deleted after following the above process. But there are some plugins, which left some traces/extra files behind even after you delete the plugin through the above process.
They left some tables, rows, files, shortcodes, etc in your database. And that may impact the performance of your site. That’s why you also need to remove unwanted traces/extra files from your database.
There are normally two ways two clean your database:
- Manually
- Through Plugins
If you are tech-savvy and you are well confident that you can remove it manually, then you should go through the manual process.
But if in case, you are not tech-savvy and expert enough to do it, I would suggest using a good plugin to do so.
And the most important part, whenever you do any kind of changes to your website, you should always take the backup of your site.
Because, in any case, if your site gets damaged due to any reason, you can restore it. So, it’s better you have a backup of your site before you uninstall a WordPress plugin.
Conclusion
If you are a WordPress user, you know how plugins are important to enhance the functions and performance of the site. Normally, we install several plugins for different purposes. But after some time, we get that some of them are not in use anymore.
Or due to some other reasons, you feel that you should remove the plugin. And that is the right way also. Because, if it is not in your use, then definitely you should uninstall a WordPress plugin.
But in case, if you think that you might use your particular plugin after a few days, then you can also take the step of deactivating only. And whenever, you need to use the plugin then you just activate it.
But in case, you are sure that you don’t have any use in the near future, you can uninstall it. Because, why should you carry unnecessary baggage on your website? So, it is better, you keep your website neat and clean.
I hope you like this article and it was helpful to uninstall a WordPress plugin.
How to Identify Which Font a Website is Using?
