How To Uninstall A WordPress Plugin Completely From The Database
February 17th, 2017 | by Ravi Chahar || 9 Comments |
If you’re running a WordPress website then you would know the importance of the plugins. You can find a plugin for everything.
WordPress repository consists thousands of plugins.
But after using any plugin, you always remove it from your WordPress plugin’s list. Just like everyone, you use the uninstall button below the plugin.
Have you ever thought to uninstall a WordPress plugin completely from the database?
You would be amazed to know that even after removing any plugin from your WordPress admin area, its tables remain in the database which increases the size.
It’s important to remove those tables.
What Should You Do To Delete The Plugin Tables?
If you have ever gone through the cPanel of your web hosting then you would know the place.
But if you don’t then I will guide you.
First of all, backup WordPress database and your website’s data to your computer. It’s important to have a backup plan.
If you do something wrong, you can restore your website from backup again.
There are a few steps required to delete those tables.
Step 1:- Login to your cPanel area and find the “databases” section. Click on the phpMyAdmin icon and a new tab will open for you.
Step 2:- In the left-hand side menu, you will see the name of the database of your website. Just click on the database name and many tables will appear on the screen.
Step 3:- You should remember the name of the plugin you just uninstalled from the admin area. Just find the tables similar to the plugin’s name.
Here, I am showing you the tables generated by the SEOPressor. Just select those tables and go down, open the drop-down menu and choose “drop”.
You can also delete one row at a time. Just use the “Drop” button for each row of the table.
After removing all the rows, you can check and repair SQL database so that no extra or broken table exists.
If your website works great even after deleting those tables then it’s the high time. You have successfully removed all the extra tables generated by the plugins.
There are also a few plugins which remove their own tables when you delete them.
But it’s important to check the database after deleting every plugin.
Can You Now Uninstall A WordPress Plugin Completely?
As always told, it’s important to maintain the page loading time of your website. And the database plays an important role.
You should keep its size as minimum as you can. You can also use any database optimization plugins like WP-Optimize.
But plugins don’t work always. You should do it manually. I hope now you can uninstall a WordPress plugin completely from the database?
If you have any doubt, feel free to ask.
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9 comments
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Ravi, useful information, I am going to try and remove some tables from my database which are not in use.
My database size is about 60mb after around 200 articles on my site. This seems excessive to me, is there any easy to remove the junk from my database and keep it minimal and small size?
Ahmad,
It seems you have gathered something unusual. Just 200 posts and 60 MB size of the database. You should try WP Sweep plugin to optimize the database. Sweep the draft post, revisions once in a while.
And if you know the name of the old plugins you have used then the method mentioned above would work.
~Ravi
Thanks Ravi, will give it a try. I know there is something fishey, just need to figure it out.
Hi Ravi,
Once again another useful practical WordPress tutorial.
I use Wp-optimize to clean the data base once in a while. Your tutorial above saves yet another installation of WordPress plugin which something I love.
Thanks for always sharing your knowledge with us.
Hey Shamsudeen,
The plugins like WP-Optimize are useful when you want to remove the tables created while revision or drafting the posts. But the residue of an installed plugins should be deleted manually.
Thanks for stopping by.
~Ravi
Hi Ravi,
My database size is about 36 MB with under 50 posts live on my site. Is it okay or should I try to delete something?
And thanks for the amazing guide.
Regards,
Shafi Khan
Hey Shafi,
I don’t understand what you have done with the database. Don’t you regularly optimize it with the plugins like WP-Optimize or WP-Sweep? Just 50 posts and 36MB size, it’s too much.
I am about to have 400 posts and the database size is just 11MB. You should definitely check for the extra tables. First use the database optimization plugin, a caching plugin.
~Ravi
Hi Ravi,
This is a nice tip for keeping your site optimized and light.
Anything you can clean up will help get that all important fast load time, and improve user experience… which all gives you the best search position possible.
-Donna
Hey Donna,
Most of the people are fed up of the size of the database which directly affects the page loading time.
It’s very important to clean that up by deleting all the extra tables created before.
Thanks for your input.
Enjoy your weekend.
~Ravi