Interesting when you rummage through the plugins and what is out there. For example WP Reset , which enables blog operators to reset their entire site to its original state. Apart from the fact that you don’t necessarily need a plugin for it (I’ll get to that in a moment), the question naturally arises why you should do something like this Reset WordPress.
Plugin or manual reset?
The manual reset of a WordPress-based site works as follows:
- You make one last backup, because better safe than sorry. Maybe you will need the data again later …
- The old database is either deleted or remains. If the latter is the case, a new one is created in order to then completely reinstall WordPress.
- All data will be deleted from the web server and a new installation of WordPress will be initiated. In the wp-config.php, the new access data for the database are stored beforehand.
- WordPress will be completely reinstalled.
Now you have the effort that you have to reinstall all themes and plugins again.
However, if you use the previously mentioned plug-in, this only deletes certain files.
- The following are deleted: All posts, pages, comments, media entries, custom post tapes and users. In addition, all associated database entries are also deleted at the same time.
- The following will not be deleted: themes, plugins, media in the upload folder, page title and WordPress address, language and SEO settings and the user who initiated the reset.
This saves you the entire process of reinstalling and you can start over with your site without much effort.
Caution: Resetting doesn’t just remove files
Apart from the fact that all pages and posts and thus the entire website content are deleted, this is also not entirely without in terms of SEO. For example, if you have already published several hundred articles online, there is a high probability that they are already ranking for one or the other term. If these are now removed, you will also lose your positions in the search engines.
When to completely reset WordPress?
There are a few scenarios in which resetting the entire page can make sense. Let’s take a look at them in detail.
Testing of plugins and themes
You start a completely new page and have loaded the demo files of a theme. To delete them, use the WP Reset plugin and then start the page that best suits you optically.
Clean restart of the page
Your current project gets the passport. You don’t feel like it anymore and on top of that you also have a domain that is nice and neutral and is also suitable for a new project. Here, too, it is of course helpful to be able to quickly start over by resetting the page.
A tip at this point: Check the rankings of your site and the traffic! If there are good values here, it may be worthwhile to sell the site and start over with a completely new domain. Or you just keep the project and start a second one at the same time. Who knows, maybe you want to continue with the first one. If there are opportunities to market the site and thus generate passive income, that would of course be more advisable than deleting everything!
Too much unnecessary data
Posts that have been deleted, revisions that have been added and occupy databases, comments that are no longer relevant because you switched to the “magazine style” in which the comment function was deactivated … There are a lot of things that change accumulates when the page has reached a certain age or size. Here, too, it can of course make sense to clean up the page. But it’s best to make a backup and look at the most important rankings beforehand. It can be useful not to reset directly here, but simply to free a day or two in your diary to clean up the page. Not that you end up deleting something that shouldn’t go away!
