WordPress Cleanup: How to Uninstall WordPress Plugins Without Breaking Your Site

With thousands of plugins to choose from, you can use WordPress to accomplish any web publishing task imaginable. But over time, all those plugins can pile up. Maybe you tested a few and forgot to deactivate them. Or perhaps you’ve inherited a site with layers of old functionality no one fully understands.;

Now you’re wondering: Can I remove some of these? Will it break anything? Do I even need to clean them up?

In this post, we’ll walk through the case for decluttering your plugins, the risks of removing them the wrong way, and a simple process for uninstalling plugins safely without taking your site down in the process.

The Hidden Costs of Plugin Bloat

There’s no magic number of plugins that is ‘too many” for a WordPress site. A site running 30 well-coded, actively maintained plugins may perform better than a site with 10 outdated or redundant plugins. But the more plugins you add, the greater your odds of running into trouble.

Performance

Each active plugin adds code to your site. That means more database queries, HTTP requests, and scripts to load on every page. Over time, that can slow your site and degrade its user experience. Even deactivated plugins can leave behind database clutter that slows things down.

Security

A WordPress plugin is a piece of third-party code with unhindered access to your site. Old plugins are sometimes taken over by bad actors and infected with malware, and because your site trusts the source, it’ll install the infected plugin without blinking an eye.

Compatibility and Maintenance

Plugins don’t always play nicely together, with your theme, or with new versions of WordPress. Conflicts can cause bugs, broken pages, or even the white screen of death. Whenever something goes wrong on your site, you have to wonder, “Is this plugin the culprit?” Removing it gives you one less thing to worry about.

In short, every plugin adds overhead. Cleaning up unused or unnecessary ones can make your site faster, safer, and easier to manage.

Why Can’t I Just Delete Unwanted Plugins?

Once you’ve decided a plugin isn’t needed, uninstalling is the obvious next step. But plugin removal isn’t always that simple, and doing it the wrong way can cause more problems than it solves.

You Might Break Site Features

A plugin may provide essential features like contact forms, marketing automation, or checkout processes. It may not be clear at first glance exactly which features a plugin provides, especially if it’s a dependency of a different plugin. If you remove one of these without realizing how deeply it’s integrated into your site, you could break key functionality.

You Could Damage Your Page Layout

Plugins often load their own stylesheets and scripts to control how pages look and behave. Removing one can result in missing layouts, broken buttons, or malfunctioning page elements. If a plugin provided shortcodes used in your content, users might see raw [shortcode_text] where a form or gallery used to be.

You Could Undermine Your Site’s SEO

Some plugins manage key SEO functions like redirects, structured data, or caching. If you remove one without replacing its role, you could slow your site, break internal links, or confuse search engines.

WordPress Cleanup: How to Safely Remove Unwanted Plugins

We’ve seen what can go wrong with decluttering your plugins, so what’s the right way to do it? In a nutshell, declutter carefully. Make changes one at a time and check to make sure everything still works as expected. Here’s a concise guide to safely uninstalling plugins from your WordPress site.

1. Create a Backup Before Making Changes

If removing a plugin has unintended consequences, it may not be enough to simply reinstall it. When you delete a plugin, its data and configuration files go with it. A full backup will allow you to restore the plugin and its data quickly.

If you are a Pressable hosting client, creating a backup is straightforward. Find the site in the Pressable Control Panel and click on Settings -> Manage Data. Scroll to “On-demand backups for this site” and create both a filesystem and database backup.

Sites hosted on other platforms can use a plugin like UpdraftPlus to create a backup. Alternatively, you can create a manual backup by copying the files to a safe location with FTP and downloading the database with phpMyAdmin, although this method is not recommended for non-technical users.

2. Use a Staging Site to Safely Test Plugin Removal

A staging site is a complete copy of your live site. It isn’t accessible to the public, so you can make changes and verify their impact without risk.

To create a staging site in Pressable, select the site’s Settings in the Pressable Control Panel. Select “Site Actions” and scroll to “Clone Site”. Enter a name for your staging site, click the “Clone as Staging Site” switch, and hit “Clone”.

Before testing plugin removals, double-check that you’re working on the staging site and not the live site.

3. Deactivate, Then Delete (One at a Time)

Once you’ve backed up and set up staging, it’s time to start removing plugins. Here’s the safest approach.

• Step 1: Deactivate the plugin: Go to Plugins > Installed Plugins in the WordPress Dashboard, find the plugin you want to remove, and click Deactivate. Deactivation stops the plugin from running, but keeps its files and settings intact.
• Step 2: Test your site: Browse your site carefully. Check page layouts, interactive elements, forms, checkout flows, and anything the plugin might have touched. If something breaks, you can reactivate the plugin immediately and investigate further. Alternatively, use a visual regression testing tool to compare your site before and after plugin deactivation. 
• Step 3: Delete the plugin: If everything still works after deactivation, return to the Dashboard and click Delete. WordPress will remove the plugin files from your server.
• Step 4: Test again: Make sure nothing has changed post-deletion. Sometimes, deleting a plugin can have delayed effects if it has deep integrations.

Be sure to remove plugins one at a time, testing between each step. Avoid bulk deletions unless you’re confident none of them are connected to active features. If you delete lots of plugins at once, you’ll have no way of knowing which one caused any issues.

Don’t forget to check for lingering shortcodes on pages or posts. These may need to be replaced or removed manually.

When you are satisfied that all unnecessary plugins have been safely removed on your staging site, you can push the changes to your live site.

Keeping WordPress Plugins Under Control

For a mature site with lots of old plugins, decluttering is time-consuming. Once you’ve got plugins under control, it’s a good idea to keep on top of things so you don’t have to tackle plugin bloat again.

• Audit your plugins regularly:  Every month or quarter, review your installed plugins. Remove anything that’s no longer needed, inactive, or redundant. 
• Delete what you don’t use:   Don’t let old or deactivated plugins linger. If you’re not planning to use it again, remove it properly to reduce clutter and risk. Plugins don’t have to “spark joy,” but they should be useful. 
• Stay on top of updates:  Keep plugins, themes, and WordPress itself up to date to ensure you have the latest security patches. If possible, automate WordPress core and plugin updates so you have one less thing to think about. 
• Choose quality over convenience:  Before installing a new plugin, check reviews, update history, and support options. Make sure any plugins you install are well-regarded and actively developed.

Treat WordPress plugin management as an ongoing habit, not just an emergency fix, and your site will stay fast, safe, and easy to manage.

Nox Dineen-Porter

Nox possesses a unique blend of industry and academic expertise, seamlessly integrating her knowledge of communication, software development, and research. Her journey with WordPress began in 2003, first as an avid blogger and later as a skilled software developer. Her fascination with WordPress led her to join the Pressable support team, where she effectively combines her passion for technology with her love of problem-solving and her deep understanding of user behavior. As a PhD candidate, Nox is poised to make a significant impact on the field, bringing together her expertise in research, communications, and software development to provide context and clarity about health science and devices to the public. When she's not at her computer she enjoys hiking, running, yoga, and street photography.