Time for another WordPress Wednesday! Weekly tips for new and established self-hosted WordPress users, designed to help you get the most out of your site from Sarah, a WordPress website developer.
How to Delete a WordPress Plugin
We’ve all done it – installed a plugin and found that it either didn’t do what we wanted it to do or the developer stopped updating it and things have started to go a little weird. Or maybe you’ve just found a better plugin that suits you more and you want to stop using the old one. Either way, they’ll probably come a time with your WordPress site when you’ll want to remove a plugin, and today I’m going to show you how to do it! :)
First we need to go to our Installed Plugins directory, which you can find on the sidebar menu under Plugins.
Once you’re there you’ll see a list of all the installed plugins for this site, including any that need updating or are deactivated.
You can’t delete an active plugin from your site, so before you delete a plugin you need to deactivate it. Find the plugin you want to delete and click on the blue Deactivate link.
Once that’s done you’ll notice that the plugin background changes to while and you’ll get a red Delete button:
Click on that and you’ll get this kind of scary notice:
But it’s okay! Just click “Yes, Delete these files” and that’s it, your plugin has been removed. You’ll see this notification afterwards:
It’s good practice to clear out things you don’t need, on your website, in your life – digital clutter can be just as pervasive as the real thing! You’ll also find that the more activated plugins you have, the slower your site can become so it’s worth clearing them out to make it faster for your readers, too.
If you’re not sure if you want to get rid of a plugin yet you can always leave it as deactivated for a while – it won’t slow your site down that way but the files will still take up space on your server, something worth bearing in mind if you’re on a smaller hosting package :)
