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How to Allow Users to Delete Their WordPress Accounts

Giving users the option to delete their accounts is an important aspect of managing a WordPress site. Whether it’s to comply with data privacy regulations like GDPR or simply to enhance user control, enabling account deletion shows respect for your users’ autonomy and builds trust.

With our expertise in WordPress development and user management, we recognize the critical balance between security and user convenience.

For instance, if you allow user registration on your website and a user does not want to keep their account anymore, then they will have to manually ask you to delete it. However, allowing users to delete their own accounts can streamline your site’s administration and improve user satisfaction.

In this article, we will show you how to easily allow users to delete their WordPress account from their account area.

Allow users to delete their accounts in WordPress

Why Allow Users to Unregister Themselves in WordPress?

Many WordPress websites allow users to register. These could be membership websites, blogs that accept user-submitted posts, or an online store.

However, once users register their WordPress account, they cannot delete it themselves. They will have to manually ask you through a contact form to delete their information.

Website owners may want to keep the user-contributed content or at least have their email addresses. However, if you give users control of their information, then they may feel more confident in their interactions on your WordPress website.

That being said, let’s see how to easily allow users to unregister themselves in WordPress and completely delete their WordPress account information.

How to Allow Users to Delete Their WordPress Accounts

First, you need to install and activate the Delete Me plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, head over to the Settings » Delete Me page from the WordPress admin sidebar to configure the plugin settings.

From here, you can start by checking the boxes next to the user roles that can delete their accounts.

For example, if you want authors to be able to delete their accounts, then you can check the box next to that option.

Choose user roles that are allowed to delete their accounts in WordPress

Next, scroll down to the ‘Your Profile’ section. Here, you can choose link styling and text that the user roles will see on their profile page.

For example, you can add a heading, a warning message, and a URL for the page that users will be redirected to upon deleting their accounts.

Profile settings

After that, scroll down to the ‘Miscellaneous’ section on the page.

From here, you can check the ‘Delete Comments’ option if you want the comments added by the user to be automatically deleted from your website upon account deletion.

You can also check the ‘E-mail Notification’ option. This will allow you to receive an email with account deletion details every time a user deletes their account.

Keep in mind that this email will be sent to the administrator’s email address.

Finally, click the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.

Configure miscellaneous settings and click 'Save Changes

Now, you will need to switch to a user account with the user roles you selected earlier.

Once logged in, go ahead and visit the Profile page. You will see a new section where users can click to delete their accounts.

Delete account link on user profile page

When a user clicks on the link, they will be shown a warning that deleting an account will delete their access and all their content.

Once the user agrees, this plugin will proceed to delete their account.

Click Confirm deletion button

Adding Delete Account Link to Custom User Profile Page

If you use a custom user profile page, then this is how you can allow users to delete their WordPress accounts.

Simply add the following shortcode to your custom profile page template:

[plugin_delete_me]Delete Your Account[/plugin_delete_me]

Note: When a user deletes their account, it will also delete all their content (posts, pages, custom post types) and move it to the trash.

A user can re-register a new account using the same email address, but this will not recover the content they contributed earlier. However, as a site administrator, you can recover content from trash if it is not permanently deleted.

For detailed instructions, you may want to see our beginner’s guide on how to recover and restore deleted pages in WordPress.

Bonus: Allows Users to Edit Their Comments in WordPress

Other than allowing users to delete their accounts, you can also give them permission to edit their comments on your WordPress blog.

By default, WordPress does not allow users to edit a comment once it’s published. This can be annoying if a user spots a grammatical error or wants to add more content to their message once it’s been submitted.

By allowing users to edit comments, you can build a sense of community and increase engagement on your blog. To do this, you must install and activate the Comment Edit Core plugin.

The plugin works out of the box and also lets you set a time limit for users to edit comments.

Set a time limit for editing a comment

However, keep in mind that it only allows logged-in users to edit comments. For more details, see our tutorial on how to allow users to edit their comments in WordPress.

We hope this article helped you learn how to allow users to delete their accounts in WordPress. You may also want to see our step-by-step WordPress security guide for beginners and our top picks for the best WordPress plugins to help grow your site.

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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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4 CommentsLeave a Reply

  1. Syed Balkhi

    Hey WPBeginner readers,
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  2. Stacey Beckles

    I am not tech-savvy and currently trying to build a website. This blog has been very helpful. Any question I may have I am sure to find something here. Thank you for all your hard work and keep up the good job.

    • WPBeginner Support

      You’re welcome, glad you’ve found our content helpful :)

      Admin

  3. Swayam

    It does not delets the custom post type using in box directory theme

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