When you use WordPress with cPanel, you can take advantage of the best of both worlds. WordPress provides content management capabilities, while cPanel provides hosting and management tools. This makes it easy to create and manage your website without having to worry about technical details.

However, there may be reasons why you’d want to have WordPress uninstalled. Whether you are looking to migrate from WordPress, sell your website, or just encountered a problem that just requires you to uninstall the CMS and start all over again? Whichever your reason for choosing to uninstall WordPress, we’ll be giving you a step-by-step guide on how to do it through cPanel.

Uninstalling WordPress from cPanel: Step-By-Step Guide

Uninstalling WordPress with cPanel is very easy – just a short click-through process. However, before you go through with it, it’s important to understand that it’s standard practice to create a backup for your site and deactivate plugins and themes. After deleting WordPress, you’ll also want to delete the WordPress database, and cleanup to optimize your cPanel. In subsequent writing, we’ll give a step-by-step guide to the entire process.

Step #1 Backup Your Website

Before uninstalling WordPress, it’s crucial to back up your website files and database. This ensures that you have a copy of your content and settings in case you want to reinstall WordPress later or move to a different platform.

1. Log in to your cPanel account.
2. Locate and access the “Backup” or “Backup Wizard” tool.
3. Create a full backup of your website files and databases. This might involve creating separate backups for your files and your databases.

Step #2 Deactivate Plugins and Themes

If you have any active plugins or themes, it’s a good idea to deactivate and delete them before uninstalling WordPress. This helps prevent any leftover files or data.

1. Log in to your WordPress admin dashboard (usually accessed through yourwebsite.com/wp-admin).
2. Navigate to the “Plugins” section and deactivate all plugins.
3. Go to the “Appearance” section and switch to a default WordPress theme (like Twenty Twenty-One).

Step #3 Delete WordPress Files

Now you need to remove the WordPress files from your cPanel account. This can usually be done through the “File Manager” tool in cPanel.

1. Log in to your cPanel account.
2. Locate and access the “File Manager” tool.
3. Navigate to the directory where your WordPress installation is located (often in the public_html directory).
4. Select all WordPress files and folders (excluding any backups you created earlier) and delete them.

Step #4 Delete WordPress Database

You’ll also want to delete the WordPress database associated with your website.

1. Still in cPanel, locate and access the “phpMyAdmin” tool.
2. Select the database associated with your WordPress installation from the left-hand sidebar.
3. Click on the “Check All” checkbox to select all tables in the database.
4. From the dropdown menu, choose “Drop” to delete all selected tables. Confirm any prompts.

Step #5 Clean Up

After removing WordPress, make sure to clean up any leftover files and optimize your cPanel account.

1. Empty your trash or deleted files folder in the File Manager.
2. Log out of your cPanel account.

This is only a generic guide as the exact steps will depend on your hosting provider and version of cPanel. At any rate, you want to remember that this process is irreversible, so be sure to have backups of your data before proceeding. If you ever decide to reinstall WordPress, you’ll need to go through the installation process again.

While that’s the case, you can also choose to uninstall WordPress from an FTP client (if you can’t access your WordPress dashboard), or through Softaculous if you have it installed before. Now let’s explore how to use these methods for WordPress uninstallation.

Manually Uninstalling WordPress via FTP: A Step-By-Step Guide

1. Use an FTP client to connect to your website’s server.
2. Navigate to the directory where your WordPress files are located (often public_html).
3. Delete all WordPress files and folders, except for any backups you’ve created.
4. Access your hosting’s cPanel and locate the “phpMyAdmin” tool.
5. Select the database associated with your WordPress installation.
6. Drop (delete) all the tables in that database.
7. Confirm the deletion and exit phpMyAdmin.

Uninstalling WordPress via Softaculous: A Step-By-Step Guide

1. Log in to your cPanel account.
2. Look for the “Softaculous Apps Installer” or a similar option.
3. Click on it to access the Softaculous interface.
4. In the list of installed applications, find your WordPress installation.
5. Click on the “X” icon or the “Remove” button next to your WordPress installation.
6. Follow the prompts to confirm the uninstallation. Softaculous will remove the files and database associated with your WordPress installation.

This is often the most recommended method for uninstalling WordPress especially as most people choose to install WordPress with Softaculous in the first place. More so, it does much of the work for you – just follow through with the uninstallation wizard, unlike through cPanel where you’ll need to delete things like database and WordPress files separately.

Again, whichever method you’re using, you want to always make sure that a backup is created before commenting on the uninstallation process as it’s irreversible.