How To Delete A WordPress Site: A Complete Guide
Anybody who uses WordPress is familiar with how quick it is to set up a website. But what happens if you decide to delete it after a while?
Although it’s not as simple as building a website (at least, these days!), it’s still fairly easy.
Whatever your reason may be, we’re here to help! Read on as we walk you through the process of removing a WordPress site.
What To Do Before Deleting Your WordPress Site
Even though this seems counterintuitive, it’s still a good idea to make a backup of your website before deleting it.
So if you wish to travel back in time and restore your site in the future, you’ll have a copy of both your files AND your database. Well, that’s probably not in your plans today. But, who’s to say you won’t change your mind in the next few years or maybe in a couple of months?
With that said, if you don’t know how to back up your website, it’s pretty simple to do, especially with a managed WordPress hosting platform.
Here’s how:
- First things first, you need to log in to your WordPress dashboard.
- Then, when you’re in the dashboard, simply hover over the Plugins tab and select the “Add New”.
- Once you’re there, search for the All-in-One WP Migration plugin. After finding it, all you have to do is install it then activate it.
- After activating the plugin, the All-in-One WP Migration plugin will now be accessible on your dashboard. Now, just hover over it and then select “Backup”.
- When you’re there, you’ll see a big green button that says “Create Backup”. Just click on that and you can wait for the backup process to finish.
- You can now just click on “Download Backup” to have a copy of everything inside your WordPress site.
And that’s it! You’ve successfully backed up your website. You can pretty much just import the file back into your WordPress dashboard if ever you decide you want your files and database back.
How To Delete WordPress Site Manually
With the use of an FTP client or the File Manager, WordPress can be uninstalled manually. Here’s how it works.
- To do this, simply go to the File Manager in your web host’s administration interface. For this guide, we’ll be using Hostinger’s hPanel.
- First, open the public_html directory.
- Then, make sure you save the database name from the wp-config.php file since we’ll use that later.
- After taking note of that, go back to the public_html directory, select all the files then click on the trash bin icon at the very top.
And there you have it!
Well, we’re not done just yet. The database is still there even if the software has been removed. So let’s uninstall WordPress completely by removing it as well.
- First things first: remember the database name you took note of earlier? Simply go to your MySQL database section and find that.
- Then, click on the 3 dots next to it and select “Delete”.
That’s it! You’ve successfully deleted your website.
Alternative: Delete Site Using Your Web Hosting Dashboard
If you’re not a fan of the method we mentioned above, you can always delete your website using your web hosting dashboard. We’ll be using one of the best web hosts, Hostinger, for this example again.
Let’s get right into it:
- The first thing you have to do is go to the Websites menu on your web hosting dashboard.
- Then, choose the domain you wish to delete, click the 3 dots beside it, and choose “Delete website”.
- A warning will then be displayed to you, alerting you of the specifics of the deletion, including the domain name and the deletion of all associated data.
- After reading everything (and making sure that you want to push through with it), just click on “Delete”.
That’s pretty much all there is to it, your website will now be removed from your web hosting account.
Deleting EVERYTHING From Everywhere
Your website could still appear on the internet even after you’ve removed it. For instance, it can still show up on website archives and search engine results. Fortunately, there’s a way to remove it.
One way of doing so is by using the Google Search Console. In a period of up to six months, Google offers a means to take a website off of its search results. And, if your website is still inactive after those six months, it won’t appear in the search results at all.
Aside from Google, Yahoo and Bing are also two more widely used search engines. And, because Bing also powers Yahoo search, you can use Bing’s Block URLs tool to remove your website from both sites.
If you want to go even further, you can even remove your website from the Internet Archives. This tool basically shows your website way back before you even deleted it. And, if you don’t want people to see that, all you have to do is go to their website and email them to remove it from their database.
A Clean Slate
Deleting your website is a fairly easy and straightforward process. With the 2 ways we mentioned, all it takes is a few clicks to say goodbye to your website.
But, as a reminder, remember to always create a backup of your website before removing any content. You’ll never know what can happen, and once your data is gone, it’s gone forever. There is no way to get it back.
Don’t worry though, as long as you follow everything we mentioned, you’re as good as safe and you can start over with ease anytime you’d like to.
