WordPress plugins are a great way to add extra features and functionality to your website. But sometimes, you may find that you need to uninstall a plugin for various reasons. Uninstalling a WordPress plugin is not difficult, but it can be confusing if you’ve never done it before.
In this guide, I will show you how to easily uninstall a WordPress plugin in just a few steps.
Difference Between Deactivating and Uninstalling a WordPress Plugin
Before I get into the steps, it’s important to understand the difference between deactivating and uninstalling a WordPress plugin. Deactivating a plugin will disable its features and settings but not delete your settings or data.
Uninstalling a plugin, on the other hand, will completely remove all of the plugin’s files, settings, and data. It’s important to understand that when you uninstall a plugin, all of the plugin’s data will be permanently deleted from your WordPress database.
This means that if you later decide to reinstall the plugin, your old settings and data will be gone. Thus, if you just want to temporarily disable a plugin, you should deactivate it instead of uninstalling it.
Read also: How to install a WordPress plugin.
How to Uninstall a WordPress Plugin From the WordPress Dashboard
You can do it in a couple of steps.
1. Log into your WordPress site and click on Plugins in your WordPress dashboard.
2. Find the plugin you want to uninstall and click Deactivate. This will disable the plugin and it’ll no longer have any effect on your website
3. Now, click on Delete. This will completely remove the plugin from your website, including all its associated files and settings.
And that’s it! You’ve just uninstalled a WordPress plugin.
By the way, did you notice the name of the plugin I just uninstalled in the image? It’s called Yoast Duplicate SEO. It’s a plugin that allows you to duplicate pages and posts in WordPress to write articles even faster. Give it a try!
How do I Find Uninstalled Plugins in WordPress?
If you accidentally uninstall a plugin, it disappears from your WordPress dashboard. You cannot find it anymore.
But if you want to recover the plugin with all the settings and data you already had on it, you will need to restore a backup. That’s why I recommend that you always keep a backup of your WordPress site. You can use plugins like UpdraftPlus or Jetpack to easily create and manage backups of your website.
Jetpack, for example, doesn’t only back up your website. It’s also a WordPress security plugin that protects your website against attacks.
Uninstalling Pugins Is Easy
Uninstalling a WordPress plugin is not difficult and can be done in just a few steps. Just remember to first deactivate the plugin you are no longer using, as uninstalling it will delete all your data and settings related to it. And always keep backups of your website so you can quickly restore the plugin if something goes wrong.
