A WordPress theme modifies the arrangement of your WordPress site, which includes layout, colors, typography, and responsive work functions. If you uninstall or delete theme in WordPress your front-end will be either blank or it will acquire the design of the next theme you have installed, i.e. your visitor will see a different look of the website.
There are lots of free WordPress themes in the WordPress.org Theme repository, though many webmasters use custom or premium WordPress themes for their website. The reason behind is the premium or custom themes provide full control over their theme and provides better designs, performance, and pre-made templates.
What a themes can do to our website?
Themes take the content and data stored by WordPress and display it in an organized form, in the browser. There are many other options are available to you when using a theme.
For example:
#1. Your theme can possess various layouts, static or responsive, using one column or two or more columns, etc.
#2. Your theme can display any content anywhere you want it to be displayed.
#3. A theme can specify which devices or actions make your content visible.
Installing a theme in WordPress is one of the easiest tasks. All you have to go to appearance > click on themes > click on add new > Now you can choose a free theme from the WordPress theme library or alternatively you can upload a custom or premium theme to your WordPress by clicking on “Upload Theme”
But when it comes to uninstall WordPress theme or delete theme people often get confused about how to delete themes in WordPress? There is no delete or uninstall option in an active theme which makes it difficult to guess where and how to do it. However, there is a little trick that will let you know how to remove the theme from WordPress.
Why You Should Remove Unused Themes From WordPress?
Before you know about how to delete WordPress theme, it’s would be helpful if you understand why you should do it. Why you shouldn’t keep a lot of themes installed in WordPress?
Activating a new theme doesn’t remove the old theme automatically. Instead, the previous theme will be stored in the WordPress theme folder as an installed theme. That means if you have installed a lot of themes previously for any sort of reason and have not removed them yet then those themes are in your WordPress theme folder.
These themes are not doing anything instead of occupying some places in your host. Though the theme files can’t consume a bigger amount of storage, still cleaning and keep refreshing your host and server is your job as a good blogger.
Again, if you have used any kind of custom or premium or a nulled theme, storing them for a long time may harm your website (not usually but not impossible as well). You never know which file inside the theme is having some harmful codes unless you go deep inside the codes.
I had a bad experience while keeping a custom made theme without using that. The theme was good, fast, responsive and that’s why I kept it in my WordPress folder for one extra year even after replacing that theme with a new one. Later, when I spotted some security problems with the website and perform a deep scanning, I discovered that most of the harmful files are inside that abandoned theme folder spreading to the others as well. Unreliable… you can’t just assume anything like 100% safe when you are using other’s code in an online platform.
Anyway, this is just a reason why one should not keep an unused theme. But our primary goal of this article to learn how to delete theme in WordPress regardless of the reason for uninstalling.
How To Delete Theme In WordPress?
You can delete themes in WordPress in two different ways. Both are easy to follow so keep a close eye on the images and steps I have mentioned below.
1st Method: Uninstall WordPress theme through WP dashboard
First of all, go to your WordPress dashboard. Then go to appearance > themes.
Now you will see all the installed themes. Pick the one which you want to delete. (Click on the theme name or the image but do not click on active or live preview)
Remember, you can not delete an activated theme. The theme should be remain inactivated (just installed) to get deleted.
Now click on the delete button at the right bottom corner of the card.
This is the first and quick method to delete theme in WordPress easily.
2nd method: Delete WordPress Theme From Host File Manager Or Using FTP
In this method, you are going to use your web host file manager or your FTP account using a client. Login to your cPanel and find your file manager or log in directly from FTP client.
Use a good FTP client:
- FileZilla
- Core FTP
- Smart FTP
In this tutorial, I am using cPanel file manager but in terms of FTP client, the procedure is the same excluding the configuration. First of all, in the directory, open the WordPress installation folder.
Find out the best themes for portfolio website in terms of performance and design.
Now go to WP-CONTENT from the WordPress installation folder.
Open the “themes” folder and right-click on which theme you want to delete. Then click on delete to uninstall WordPress theme.
Important:
Once you have deleted the theme in WordPress, the plugin related to that theme should be deleted as well. To delete a plugin simply go to the wp-content/plugins folder and delete the plugin.
Final Words:
This is how you can easily delete theme in the WordPress site. Keeping your website updated and fresh is your job. Cleaning unnecessary themes and plugins is one of them. So try to keep the theme that you are currently using rather than holding all the previous themes.
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