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How to Delete Your WordPress Blog

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Do you want to delete your WordPress blog? While blogging is fun, sometimes you may just want to get rid of it all. Recently one of our users asked us if it was possible to delete their WordPress blog. In this article, we will walk you step by step on how to delete your WordPress blog safely and what precautions you should take.

Before we start, it is important to note that there are two types of WordPress blogs. The first and the more common one is self hosted WordPress.org website. The second type is blogs hosted on WordPress.com. See the difference between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.

Note: If you just want to switch from one platform to another for more freedom, then you should follow our tutorial on how to properly move your blog from WordPress.com to WordPress.org.

Delete your WordPress Blog

Having that said, let’s take a look at how to delete your WordPress blog.

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Deleting Your WordPress.com Blog

First, we will take a look at how to delete your WordPress.com blog.

Step 1:Backup

No matter how sure you are about deleting your site, you should always create a backup in case you change your mind in the future. This backup will come in handy if you ever want to restore your website.

Unfortunately, there is no single button on WordPress.com that you can press and download all your data. You will have to manually backup your WordPress.com site by going to your dashboard in the Tools » Export section.

Export your WordPress.com blog

The all content export button only exports your posts, pages, categories, tags, comments, etc. It will not backup your media files and uploads. For that you will need to click on Media and manually download all your files.

Step 2: Deleting WordPress.com Blog

You will find the link to delete your site under the tools menu in your WordPress.com dashboard.

Delete your WordPress.com blog

When you click on it, you will be asked to provide a reason. Click on ‘Another Reason’ to continue deleting your site.

This will bring up a popup window where you will be asked to make sure that you have exported your data. It will also warn you that by deleting your site, you will lose all its data and will not be able to use it anymore. Click on the check box and then click on delete now button.

Confirm that you want to delete your WordPress.com blog

You will receive a confirmation email to make sure that it is you requesting the deletion of your site. You need to click on the verification link inside the email to finish your blog deletion.

That’s all, your WordPress.com blog is deleted.

Step 3: Custom Domains

If you purchased a domain from WordPress.com, then you will not be able to delete your WordPress.com site. WordPress will inform you that this site cannot be deleted because it uses a custom domain.

In order to access the domain manager, your site needs to be active on WordPress.com. At this point, you really have two options.

You can either move that domain to a different registrar which will take a few days. Each domain registrar such as Godaddy, NameCheap, etc have their own instructions that you can follow.

Alternatively, you can simply make your WordPress.com blog private.

Simply login to your WordPress.com dashboard and go to Settings » Reading page. Scroll down to the Site Visibility section and check the option ‘I want to make my site private…’.

Making a WordPress.com site private

Doing so will not delete your WordPress.com blog, but it will not be publicly accessible. You can wait until your domain registration expires and then delete your blog. Make sure your domain is not set to auto renew in WordPress.com.

Deleting a Self Hosted WordPress.org Site

Deleting a self hosted WordPress.org site is actually a lot simpler, since you have all the freedom and complete access to your own data.

Step 1: Backup Before you delete your website, make sure that you have a complete WordPress backup of your site. Even if you feel that you will never restore that site again, we still recommend that you backup your data just in case you change your mind.

Step 2: Delete Files Login to your hosting account’s cPanel dashboard and locate the file manager.

Using cPanel filemanager to delete your WordPress.org site

In the file manager, go to the root directory of your website and delete all the files and folders.

That’s all you have successfully deleted your self hosted WordPress.org site. Next, simply cancel your hosting subscription, and you are done.

If you ever change your mind and want to restore your site, then here is the guide on how to restore WordPress from backup.

Final Thoughts

We want to emphasize that when you delete a website, it doesn’t mean that it’s gone from the web right away. Google usually creates a cache of your website that stays there for as long as Google wants it to.

There are also projects like Archive.org that tries to preserve the web by tracking historical changes of websites.

Lastly, there are spammers who scrape (copy / steal) full websites. If your website was scraped, then all that content still lives on until the spammer decides to take it down.

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Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi with over 16 years of experience in WordPress, Web Hosting, eCommerce, SEO, and Marketing. Started in 2009, WPBeginner is now the largest free WordPress resource site in the industry and is often referred to as the Wikipedia for WordPress.

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Reader Interactions

16 CommentsLeave a Reply

  1. Syed Balkhi says

    Hey WPBeginner readers,
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  2. Theresa Rice says

    I received bad information about starting a blog and want delete it and start over with same name/domain. I only posted 5 posts and had no comments. Everything is messed up from changing themes and doing things others suggested.

    Please advise! Thanks!

  3. Hanna Nicholson says

    It is indeed a very informative article. While attempting to remove my WordPress website I stumbled upon blog where they have mentioned similar steps to delete WordPress site. However, I have found some more ways on the website. For example, they have shared deleting the site via SQL command prompt, which I tried and it was super easy. Would it be possible to cover this also in your blog?

  4. athulp says

    sir ,
    i just installed my wordpress. but i want do delete it and do it again. will it effect seo?

    • Haitham Alnaqeb says

      I think you can do it, but be carful of you are using the same posts of the previous blog. this may impact the SEO.

  5. Rommie Carnevale says

    Thanks for the great article. I have to agree with the others in mentioning that deleting the database is important as well! Maybe even including a tidbit about ensuring your find and delete the correct one would be good. :)

  6. estela vallejes says

    oIn the Tool button in my dashboard it does not have the delete option. and Im having difficulty accessing my cpanel. and my Setting button does not have the reading option of private. Can you please help me with this?

  7. Kim says

    on the backup [https://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Backups] and deletion of your WordPress site, you may want to include instructions on backing up the database (at least with hosting accounts with cPanel, there is a database section, PhpMyAdmin being the tool that can be used), then removing the database within the cpanel database section, and the username associated with that database (for full / clean deletion).

    These extra steps of backup can help with heartache if later, the decision to have had it gone for good is rethought or reversed.

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