Having too many active WordPress plugins and themes can cause issues with your website. There can be security, pagespeed or maintenance issues trying to keep everything up-to-date. While there isn’t a recommended number of plugins and themes you should have, a general rule of thumb would be to only use what you need. Let’s learn how to remove WordPress plugins and themes.
How To Remove WordPress Themes
You can only use one WordPress theme at a time so any additional themes on your site is simply adding files and maintenance to your website. Remove any unused WordPress themes by:
- Visiting Appearance > Themes and clicking on an inactive theme.
- Click the Delete link In the lower right corner of that popup.
- Click OK to confirm.
The theme has been removed from your website.
How To Remove WordPress Plugins
You can have any number of WordPress plugins installed but you should only be using the necessary ones. Any plugins that are deactivated are simply adding files to your website and rows of data in your database. If the plugin is deactivated and you do not need this functionality and data anymore you can remove the WordPress plugin by:
- Visiting Plugins > Installed Plugins.
- Click the Delete link below the plugin name.
- Click OK to confirm.
The plugin and data have now been removed.
How To Remove WordPress Plugins In Bulk
If you need to remove more than one WordPress plugin at a time:
- Visit Plugins > Installed Plugins.
- Check the checkbox next to every deactivate plugin you need to delete.
- From the Bulk Actions drop down select Delete.
- Click Apply.
- Click OK to confirm.
Remember that deactivating a plugin will not delete your data for that specific plugin. For example, if you are using Woocommerce for your shop and deactivate the plugin your products will still be in your database, just not shown in your admin.
If you delete the plugin it should remove all of the data associated with that specific plugin. Back to our Woocommerce example, if you delete this plugin and reinstall it again your products will not be in your current database.
