Delete a WordPress Plugin

A good rule of thumb with WordPress is to use as few plugins as is possible. Plugins are a by-design, and the most useful way of making WordPress become all the things you dreamed it could be – but, plugins also take up resources.

If you have plugins that are activated on your site, but you aren’t and won’t be using them, you can increase pageload by deactivating them immediately. Assuming you know that a plugin installed on your WordPress is unnecessary, you can delete it.

Generally, if a plugin is already deactivated, none of it’s javascript, jQuery, or HTTP requests – code elements that take up valuable server resources – will remain active within WordPress. You may see some small gains in pagespeed, but mostly, gain will be an orderly house and more secure site.

Ask yourself two questions before you move ahead:

• Is this truly an unnecessary extension? Or is there any chance that it’s secretly silently performing an important role on my site? (A good indicator would be that it is deactivated, or after you deactivate it, your site continues to operate the way that you’d expect it to.)
• Does this plugin have settings that are configured for my site, that is saved in the plugin that will be lost upon deletion?

Ready?

1. woop into your Installed Plugins page.

2. Scroll down to the plugin that you want to delete. You will see that you have some options for managing the plugin. Two mandatory options are “Activate” and “Delete”. You know what we’re going to do here.

This is actually one of my favorite calendar extensions. You should check it out.

3. Click delete to eliminate the plugin. WordPress will ask you to confirm your choice.

4. When your deletion is successful, you will see a message like this one: