Looking for steps to delete themes in WordPress? Perfect, we’ve got ’em. Before we go into it, let’s give you a few tips. First, always make a backup of your website. Second, we recommend backing up the theme before deleting it, especially if you made adjustments to it. And, instead of installing and activating themes to test them, consider installing WordPress locally, separate from your website. With that out of the way, here’s how to delete themes in WordPress.
Benefits of deleting WordPress Themes
If you are wondering what are the benefits of deleting WordPress themes, Here you go –
- Deleting themes will free up disk usage on your web server, allowing you to use it for other important things.
- Unnecessary themes that are not active will / may cause security threats targeted toward it.
- It will help you to clean up your theme section on your WordPress back end, especially if you have a lot of themes installed.
How to delete themes in WordPress using the Admin dashboard
- Log in to your WordPress Admin Section.
- On the left-hand side, hover over an option named Appearance.
- Click on Themes.
- You cannot delete or uninstall an active theme. If you are currently using the theme you want to delete, pick any other theme, click on it, and click on Activate.
- Click on the theme you want to delete. In the preview window, click on Delete in the bottom right-hand corner.
Deleting WordPress themes via FTP
If you don’t have an FTP client installed on your computer, feel free to pick any of the FTP clients we recommend.
- Open your FTP client. A Login window will appear.
- Enter the hostname, username, and password given by your hosting provider. Unless otherwise specified, leave the Port Number and Protocol on default.
- Once the connection is established, a list of files will appear. Navigate to /wp-content/themes of your website.
- Find the folder with the name of the theme you want to delete.
- Optional. Copy the folder to a location on your computer to create a backup.
- Right-click on the folder, then choose Delete.
Deleting WordPress themes using File Manager
Instead of downloading an FTP client, you can use an online version of it. Most of the cPanel-powered hosting services such as Siteground come with an in-built file manager.
- Log in to the Dashboard on your hosting provider’s website. They were provided at the time of purchase.
- Find a category called Storage, Files, Data, Advanced, or something similar.
- Find an option called File Manager or FTP.
- This time, you need to find the root folder, most often named public_html.
- Once again, go to /wp-content/themes.
- Delete a folder with the name of the theme.
So, now you know a way to delete themes in WordPress. As mentioned, only delete a theme you modified if you are absolutely sure you won’t be using it again, and be sure to take a backup.
FAQs
It is not compulsory to always remove all the inactive themes in WordPress. But removing them will improve security slightly. If you are planning to switch to a certain team that is currently inactive, it is okay to keep it. Even though it is inactive, make sure to update regularly.
No. If you delete a parent theme, the child theme will be unusable. Because the child theme inherits files from the parent theme.
If you only made changes in the child theme, you will not lose it even though you delete the parent theme. As soon as you use the same child theme where the changes are made, along with the parent theme. Those changes will be in effect.
If no changes were made to the theme or its files, you can simply reinstall it just like you installed your theme the first time. If you made any changes to it. Your only option to get those changes back is to use a previous backup.
