Whether you’re resuming from an old project, closing an online business, or switching blogging for a new career, deleting a WordPress site is not as simple as you might think. Even if you delete the website’s files and database search engines can still index the site and list it in the same searches as before. If you want to avoid such things, follow this step-by-step guide and learn how to permanently and completely delete your WordPress site from the internet. If you want to jump to a specific part of this article, simply click one of the links below:
Create Backup
The first step, which applies to many other things you can do with WordPress, is always to save a backup of your site. This may seem unnecessary since you are trying to delete this website, but you can never be completely sure that you will not need some data later or that you might reconsider deleting it. If you do, restoring a site backup will be much easier than creating the same website from scratch.
Now that you have a backup of the website for security, you can move on to the next steps.
Search engines keep records of a website even if you delete all its files, databases and domain. A search engine may include your site in related searches even if you have deleted it. They do this on the assumption that your website is temporarily down and may be up and running again. This, of course, is not ideal.
You can hide your website from search engines by reconfiguring the robots.txt file. This file is essentially a guideline for search engines on how to crawl and index your site files. By setting these directives to signal crawlers not to index your website, you will effectively hide the website from search engines.
To do this, you need to create a new file called robots.txt and write the following code in it:
User-agent: * Disallow: /
This code does not allow any search engine bot like Googlebot to access the URLs of the domain containing the file.
Deleting a website hosted by any third party hosting company i.e. not with wordpress.com can be done in three relatively easy steps. By deleting the website files, database and domain name, you will erase all existing traces of the website.
Deleting Website Files
Deleting website files for a self-hosted website can be done via cPanel’s File Manager or an FTP client.
To do this via cPanel you need to go to your hosting account and Login to your cPanel control panel. Then simply Access the File Manager option.
After entering the File Manager public_html directory. If you have multiple websites hosted in this account, you will see multiple folders inside the public_html directory. In this case, access the folder of the website you want to delete and delete all the files in it..
To delete website files using an FTP client, you must: Connect to the server with your FTP credentials and once again public_html directory. Open the website’s folder and delete all the files in it.
Deleting the Website Database
The database is the main part of a website and must be deleted to completely delete the website. To do this you need to go to cPanel dashboard once again and Access MySQL Databases.
Once there, you can scroll down to find a list of databases available on your server. To the right of each of the rows containing the name of the database is a link to delete that database.. Use only the link to the database you want to delete.
If you do not have this option, you will need to contact your hosting provider to consult the next steps to delete the intended database.
How to Delete a WordPress Website Domain Name
While some people like to retain the purchased domain name, you may no longer need it. In this case, it may be best for you to delete the domain name of your website along with the file and database.
To do this you need to Access your cPanel control panel and click on Domains.
Once inside, you will see a list of all the domains registered to that account. Find what you want to delete Press the manage button on the right side of the row.
You will be redirected to a page where you can change the root directory of the domain and below that, Remove the selected domain by pressing the Remove Domain button.
The procedure is further simplified with websites hosted on WordPress.com. So, here you have an option to just press a button and the files will be deleted along with the website’s database.
To do this you need to Go to My Sites link in the navigation bar.
Expand the Manage option and click the Settings link. Once you’ve done that, scroll down to the bottom of the settings page where you can track it. Permanently delete your site link.
You will be redirected to a new page where you will be Find the Delete Site button.
With this, you deleted all website files and databases associated with it. This also unregistered the domain name you used for that website. The next step would be to delete the wordpress.com account if you want to do it too.
To do this you need to access your profile via the profile icon link on the right side of the navigation panel.
What to do from your profile page Select the Account Settings link from the options on the left Select Permanently close your account link.
This will take you to the Close account page where you can click here. Close account button to perform this action.
Although it is hidden from bots and all the precautions mentioned above are in place, search engines will list your website in relevant searches. To stop this altogether and clearly tell search engines that your website has been permanently closed, you must: Modify the .htaccess file additionally.
You will need to create a new .htaccess file and place it where your root WordPress directory is on the server. Place the following code inside the newly created file:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/robots.txt
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ - [L,G]
Note: Make sure to change the instance and com to your domain name.
The code above uses a 410 redirect for all URLs except the robots.txt file. The 410 redirect is used when a file is no longer available and cannot be used in the future.
This will permanently delete your website from future web searches in conjunction with the previous steps.
Using this method may take some time, so if you want to speed up the process a bit, you can request a content removal. This can be done directly to Google, for example. In Google’s case, their Remove old content page. Here you will be able to post the URL of the website you deleted and the content you no longer want to show.
Now, if you also want to delete any record of the previous state of your website, you have to delete the cached snapshots from the Wayback Machine. Wayback Machine is a website service that contains cached versions of all versions of most websites ever available online.
The only way to effectively delete cached screenshots from Wayback Machine is to contact their creators at: archive.org and ask them to remove the files in question.
If for any reason you change your mind about deleting your website, you can restore it. For websites hosted on WordPress.com, this can be done within thirty days of the website being deleted. However, you will need to contact their support to have them restore the website for you.
As for restoring the self-hosted website, you can do it yourself and there is no limit to the number of days after deletion. Just restore the backup you made earlier.
final thoughts
There are many reasons why you might want to permanently delete a WordPress website. We’ve touched on some of them in this article, but whatever your reasons, the steps outlined are the same for everyone. So if you want to completely remove your site from the internet, you can do so by following the steps outlined in this article. Also, now you know how to remove all remnants of your site. Considering the above guidelines, we hope it will be much easier and hassle-free for you to remove all traces of your website.
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