How to Uninstall and completely remove WooCommerce

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Robin Scott

There are legitimate reasons to want to take WooCommerce out of a WordPress site (maybe you’re migrating it to its own subdomain, we do this a lot for our clients), and, when you’ve got rid of it, you want to take out all the extra information (products, orders, custom post types, etc etc) from the database because, well, its just a lot of cruft you don’t need if you are completely removing WooCommerce.

Luckily for you, the developers who helped to build WooCommerce had your best interests in mind when they created the plugin, and provided a nice way to simply clean out your database when you remove WooCommerce, by following the simple steps below.

How to Uninstall and completely remove WooCommerce

  1. Open your WordPress install’s wp-config.php file
  2. Right before where it says “* That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */” insert a new line, and add the following code define ('WC_REMOVE_ALL_DATA', true); – then save your file;
  3. Deactivate WooCommerce at WP-admin > plugins
  4. Delete WooCommerce at WP-admin > plugins
  5. That’s it!

You’ll find, after adding the constant, that WooCommerce removes all its old data. I’d recommend to backup your database and files before doing anything like this. Or, consult a good developer and have them do it for you. Contact us to see about WordPress & WooCommerce development on your site.

Will Anything be Left Behind?

Maybe, is the answer. Isn’t it always! You may find that WooCommerce Extensions, or certain WooCommerce content is left behind even after completely uninstalling in this way. An example of this may be items in the wp_options database.

If you are in this situation, and you’d like your WordPress Database cleaned up after removing WooCommerce, please contact us. This is something we’ve done before, and usually in a few hours, we can have your WP site looking spick and span, and loading a lot faster. We’re also experts at optimizing WordPress (with or without WooCommerce) so we’ll be able to point you in the right direction of more performance.

Note to all WP Plugin Developers

Please follow suit, and allow the option to remove all the tables, wp_options and other elements your plugin (or theme) might have added to a WordPress webmaster’s database. Its nice to clean up after yourself. Polite, even.