WordPress is great as it is fairly easy to use and allows everyone to start a blog on their own. If you have never created a site, or you have just started making your own, soon, you will realize that creating or better said designing a website is not without its ups and downs. Be ready to invest some (more) time to learn how your site works and what it needs to work properly.
How to reset your WordPress Blog or Site?
Learn how to reset your WordPress site in just a few minutes.
I’m sure that not everything is as easy as you were told, or imagined, but it is advised to tinker with different settings until you find the perfect fit. Don’t worry if you make some mistakes, as with time and lots of work, mistakes are made even by the best of us.
Once you’ve launched your WordPress site or blog, you’ll see that there are many themes and plugins that can completely change the user-experience of your site, for the better of course. You’ll probably install a few themes and or plugins to try them out and it is possible that you’ll get yourself into a position where you dislike your work and want to remove (reset) the whole site to its default values.
There are different reasons for resetting a WordPress site/blog. For example, rebuilding or repurposing the site, restoring a backup, or cleaning the installation and or content. Before resetting your WordPress site or blog, let’s talk about how WordPress actually works.
How WordPress Operates
For your WordPress site/blog to operate correctly, it needs two core components – PHP and MySQL. WordPress operates by executing codes (scripts), which are written in a language called PHP. PHP is a well-known scripting language for web development. It was created by Rasmus in 1994 and has been widely used, especially with WordPress. The language (PHP) is an HTML-embedded web scripting language, which means that the code can be embedded into the page’s HTML.
MySQL is a database where WordPress stores all of the site’s content. Your WordPress site’s settings, posts, pages, comments, usernames, passwords, backlinks, etc. are all stored here. This information is stored as values inside the database. Themes control how the content (information) is presented on the web. You can find different themes on WordPress and WordPress CMS allows for the theme to be changed without creating any fuss. You can reset a WordPress installation by resetting the values in the database to their default values. However, this won’t delete the uploaded and downloaded files, such as themes, plugins, etc. Don’t worry as you can remove these files if you want.
Why should you reset WordPress?
There are different reasons for resetting WordPress, whether you are a developer, who is testing and/or debugging, or you just want to roll back your site to a previous state. No matter your reason, you can do it much quicker and with more control by using plugins, which helps web owners. You can improve your site’s security and speed it up by resetting it.
WP Reset – Most Advanced WordPress Reset Tool
What can WP Reset do for you? Well, this WordPress plugin has many useful features. For example, it can quickly reset your site’s database to the default values without the need of modifying files. It can remove customizations, themes, and other content. WP Reset is easy and safe to use due to its multiple fail-safe mechanisms that make sure you never accidentally lose any files.
This tool is widely used by many developers and designers for creating themes and plugins. It is useful for various testing and debugging scenarios as it speeds up the whole process and enables you to reset and retry without any additional effort. Most importantly, this is the only WordPress tool for non-developers as well. The plugin is integrated with WPC Webhooks plugin, which securely connects WP to 3rd party systems.
Also, it has full WP-CLI support. By default, you have to confirm the commands, but you can use “–yes” to skip confirmation. Be careful with WP-CLI when using the GUI, make sure to do a backup before resetting.
The following WP-CLI commands are supported:
“wp reset reset”
“wp reset version”
“wp reset delete”
“wp reset snapshots”
You can take database snapshots and use the plugin to revert the settings to the desired snapshot. It is useful for developers and designers when they want to reset a site to a certain backed up point.
With WP Reset, you can also create a list of WordPress themes and plugins. When you select the list, it will be installed automatically. This is used as a shortcut, it saves developers and designers a lot of time as there is no need to do it manually each time. It also comes in handy when testing out different options on the site, because you can reset everything to your desired values, with a press of a button.
MULTISITE (WP-MU) SUPPORT
WP Reset hasn’t been completely tested with multisite, so be careful when using it. It is not recommended to reset the main site, but sub-sites should be fine. The plugin supports WordPress Version 4.0 and PHP Version 5.2 and is developed by WebFactory Ltd.
How to Reset a WordPress Blog or Site?
The first step is to install and activate the WP Reset Plugin. You install the plugin by going to WordPress Dashboard > Plugins > Add New, there you search for WP Reset plugin and click install now and activate it. The plugin can be downloaded and installed manually, but the first method is quicker and easier.
The second step is to go to Tools > WP Reset and open the WP Reset dashboard. In the WP Reset Dashboard, you’ll see warnings that describe what will happen on resetting your WordPress site/blog.
For example, resetting the site will remove your site’s posts, pages, backlinks, comments, users, etc. Media files, plugins, themes, site’s settings, logged-in user’s accounts will remain in the database. However, after the reset, media files will not show in the media library, but they are still stored on the server. After the reset, their removal is advised.
The third step is to find “Reset” in the WP Reset dashboard. To reset the site/blog, you have to type in “reset” and hit the button that says “Reset WordPress”.
Above the reset button, you’ll find the Post-reset actions section.
In this section, you have various features that can come in handy when resetting a WordPress site. For example, WP Reset can also reactivate the current theme, which is off by default and reactivate your active plugins, which is also off by default.
Check these options if you want to keep the same theme and plugins after the rest. This is a big-time saver as then, you do not have to reinstall all of these by yourself. Be careful as there is no undo, so make a backup before resetting, just in case.
Once the reset button is activated, you’re done!
Cleaning the Leftovers (Old WordPress Files)
After the reset, your WordPress installation will be reset to the default (or chosen) values, but it will also leave some old files that you can remove. You can wipe these files with WP Reset, as it can delete the transients of your site. Transients are WordPress options that have an expiration date.
They speed up the site and reduce the server’s load. Transients can be thought of as cache for data. WP Reset can delete transient entries, no matter the state.
You can clear your Uploads Folder of your WordPress by deleting all the files in your /wp-content/uploads folder. Also, you can reset your WordPress site’s theme options or delete all the themes, even the one that is active.
Unused plugins can be removed to assure additional performance and stability.
Conclusion
This is, by far, the most convenient tool for resetting your WordPress site or blog. WP Reset plugin is easy to use and often way faster than installing a new site. Deleting your posts and pages, or resetting the WordPress installation to its default values, WP Reset is the way to go! Even though it was originally designed for developers, anyone can use it. It is handy for fixing errors and speeding up your work, as it lets you re-test everything with a press of a button. Please make sure you read carefully what each option says and do a backup before resetting, just in case.