How to Disable WordPress Plugins in 2024 (3 methods)

Even though they are awesome, you may need to disable WordPress plugins at times. You can’t always be sure, yes, but maybe some are causing a conflict, or slowing down your site. Or you just don’t need them anymore.

Remember, the most important step is to keep everything on your website updated, including plugins. That way, you can keep a check if they are causing any trouble and if they are, you can disable them on time and avoid any potential issues.

There are multiple methods you can use to deactivate WordPress plugins. In this blog, I have covered three of the most common ones, including FTP, so if your WordPress dashboard is not letting you in, we’ve got you.

We will also understand the difference between deactivating and uninstalling a plugin.

 

Why Disable or Deactivate WordPress Plugins?

If your WordPress site has decided to act up, like it is not allowing you into your admin panel or showing the white screen of death, or there is annoyingly slowed performance due to too many plugins, disabling all plugins can help you figure out if one of them is the reason.

One of the reasons why you may want to disable a plugin is to avoid security issues. Some plugins can have vulnerabilities that hackers can use to attack your site. If you disable or deactiavte the plugins you don’t use, it might reduce the such kind of risks.

Following are some other reasons:

• Performance: You probably know that plugins can sometimes slow your website down. If you have a plethora of plugins installed, disable some of them so you can improve performance.
• Conflicts: Not always but at times plugins may not play well with each other or conflict with your WordPress theme too, causing your website to malfunction or display errors.
• Unnecessary features: If you’re not using all the features of a plugin, you can disable it to make it easy for yourself to manage and maintain the website.

However, you should know that disabling plugins itself can come with issues of either broken or limited functionality. So, you have to be careful. For example, you may deactivate a social media plugin to improve performance but that also means your engagement goes down.

It is better to then update everything on your site first including your plugins rather than entirely letting go of them directly. Plus, before an update goes live, make sure to first test it. This will eat a lot of your time but it is not something you can avoid.

To save time and resources, you can also get it done automatically with Cloudways SafeUpdates. Other than plugins, it automatically detects themes and cores as well for updates for $2/month.

Before deploying the updates, SafeUpdates creates a temporary staging environment where it conducts tests. Once the updates pass their tests, it automatically pushes them live. If something goes wrong during testing, it quickly rolls back the updates, so your site never goes down.

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How to Disable WordPress Plugins (3 methods)

There are three methods through which you can disable or deactivate WordPress plugins. The first one is simply through your WordPress dashboard. But if that doesn’t work, we have covered two more methods.

Disable WordPress Plugins from wp-admin Dashboard

To disable WordPress plugins from your wp-admin dashboard, follow these steps.

Deactivating single plugin

1. Log in to your WordPress dashboard.

2. Navigate to “Plugins” in the left-hand sidebar.

3. Locate the plugin you want to disable.

4. Go over the plugin’s name and click on the “Deactivate” link that appears.

5. Confirm that you want to deactivate the plugin.

Deactivating plugins in bulk

1. Head over to your WordPress dashboard.

2. Click on “Plugins” in the sidebar menu like above.

3. In the top left corner, there’s a checkbox next to all the plugins. Tick that box to select them all.

4. Now select that “Bulk Actions” menu up there. You’ll see a bunch of options. Choose “Deactivate.”

5. Hit that “Apply” button. Poof! All your plugins should be deactivated.

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Disable WordPress Plugins through FTP

There is a high chance you’re here because you were not able to disable WordPress plugins through the WordPress dashboard.

Not a problem. You can get your hands dirty and deactivate plugins manually through FTP as well.

1. Connect to your WordPress site through FTP. Use an FTP client like FileZilla to connect to your hosting account or you can use online options like ssheasy.com.
I have used Filezilla.

2. Go to the “wp-content/plugins” directory which contains all of your installed WordPress plugins.

3. Now find the folder of the plugin you want to disable.

4. Change the name of the plugin’s folder. You can add a prefix like “disabled_” to the folder name. For example, if the plugin’s folder is named “my-plugin,” you could rename it to “disabled_my-plugin.”

5. Save your changes and disconnect from FTP.

Once the plugin folder has been renamed, the plugin will be disabled.

💡Just in case you want to reactivate the plugin, rename the folder again back to its original name.

How to Deactivate WordPress Plugins via phpMyAdmin

Deactivating WordPress plugins via phpMyAdmin is a direct but a little more technical. But if you are familiar with database management, it can be a good option for you.

1. Log in to your hosting control panel.

2. Find the phpMyAdmin link.

3. Choose the database that holds your WordPress site’s data.

4. Go to the wp_options table. This table stores various settings and options for your WordPress site.

5. Look for the active_plugins option.

6. Click on the “Edit” link next to the active_plugins option.

7. The active_plugins option is a serialized array containing the slugs of active plugins. To deactivate a plugin, simply remove its slug from the array. For example, if the plugin’s slug is “my-plugin,” remove “my-plugin” from the array.

8. Click the “Go” button to save your changes.

💡I have disabled the plugins on Cloudways because that’s where my website is hosted. But don’t worry. The process of deactivating WordPress plugins via phpMyAdmin looks more or less the same like it is on traditional hosting platforms.

Difference Between Deactivating and Uninstalling a WordPress Plugin

You now know why it’s important to deactivate a plugin. But there’s still one tiny information you must be know i.e. the difference between uninstalling and deactivating.

While deactivating a plugin is not a bad practice as such, uninstalling is important if you plan on never using the plugin.

The difference between the two is simple; deactivating only deactivates the plugin, which means it still sticks around in case it’s wanted again; while uninstalling the plugin will remove it from the dashboard completely and will no longer play any role on your website.

How to Uninstall a WordPress Plugin

Great, now you know the difference between deactivating and uninstalling, and I bet you are itching to uninstall all the plugins you thought were uninstalled but were just inactive.

WordPress makes it super easy for users to uninstall plugins. All you need to do is:

• Access your dashboard from the login area and search for the plugins page.Here, you’ll see the list of all the plugins that you have installed on your site. The active plugins are highlighted in blue with options to deactivate and edit right below the name.

• Since you want to uninstall them, ignore the activate and edit buttons and press ‘Delete.’

WordPress will confirm if you really want to delete, and you already know the answer to that.

Removing Extra Files Added by a WordPress Plugin

In many cases, plugins that have been deleted leave behind files that were stored outside the plugin folder. In that case, you can complete the job through an FTP client. To do that, connect your website to the FTP client and go to /wp-content/folder.

– File manager Section

From this folder, you can delete those files and make sure the plugins have been removed from your website with finesse.

Removing Unused Shortcodes in WordPress

Many plugins make use of shortcodes in your posts and pages. If you deactivate them, those shortcodes will start to show up on your posts, and they may not look pretty.

To disable the shortcodes, you have to add this code to the theme’s functions.php file:

add_shortcode( ‘pluginshortcode’, ‘__return_false’ );

What this code does is simple; it makes the shortcodes left behind by plugin removal to display nothing. Make sure you replace the ‘pluginshortcode’ with the original plugins shortcode tag.

Note that you will have to remove this code if you want to use the removed plugin in the future again.

Cleaning Up WordPress Database

Some plugins create tables in the WordPress database. These table can carry a lot of data, thereby increasing the size of your backups.

Use phpMyadmin to delete these tables. Be warned though that you need to careful while making changes to the database. As a safety measure, create a backup before you go ahead with this method.

Log in to the cPanel, go the database section, then look for the phpMyadmin icon.

Once you have launched phpMyadmin, go to the database manager and select the tables you want to delete. Click on the drop down and just select ‘delete.’

Click ‘yes’ to confirm the delete action. And it’s done.

❗Remember: You won’t be able to reverse the process, so make sure you have a backup if you think it is necessary.

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Summary

In this blog, you will find a step-by-step guide on how to disable WordPress plugins using three different ways. This means, that if you are unable to deactivate plugins from admin dashboard, you can try other methods.

It also explains why you might want to deactivate plugins. By following the guidance provided here, you can effectively manage your WordPress plugins and maintain a healthy website.