4 Ways to Deactivate WordPress Plugins for Beginners

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WordPress plugins are essential tools for adding features and functionality to your website. However, there are times when you might need to deactivate a plugin—perhaps it’s causing conflicts, slowing down your site, or no longer serving its purpose.

Deactivating a plugin is a simple process that doesn’t delete the plugin or its settings. But here, I’m not talking about only deleting a plugin from the admin area. 

What about those scary situations when you’re locked out of your WordPress admin and can’t access it? 

This guide will walk you through multiple ways to safely deactivate WordPress plugins, even if you cannot log into your admin dashboard. This will ensure you have the flexibility to manage your site effectively and gain control over your site functions and security.

1. Deactivating via WordPress Dashboard

The WordPress dashboard is the easiest and most user-friendly way to deactivate a plugin. For the most part, this is where you need to deactivate a plugin for convenience and easy management.

Also, if you need to uninstall or delete the plugin after deactivation, the WordPress admin dashboard presents an easy step. 

Here’s what you need to do. First, log in to your WordPress admin area by navigating to yourdomain.com/wp-admin and entering your credentials. 

Once you’re on the admin page, go to Plugins> Installed Plugin” and find the plugin you want to deactivate from the list. 

Each WordPress plugin on the list displays an “Activate,” “Deactivate,” or “Settings” link below its name. Depending on the plugin’s function, you may have other links below its name, such as “Rollback to the previous version,” “setup wizard,” FAQs, Support, Docs, etc. 

The link function you’re looking for is Deactivate. Click “Deactivate” to disable the plugins from loading on your site. 

Pro Tip: Always check your website after deactivating a plugin to ensure everything functions as expected. Preferably, use a cache plugin like WP Rocket to automatically clear the website cache whenever a plugin is installed, deactivated, or uninstalled.

2. Deactivating All Plugins at Once

Sometimes, you might encounter an issue where your site crashes, and you suspect a plugin conflict. But you don’t know which particular plugin might be responsible. 

This is where deactivating all plugins at once can help troubleshoot the problem faster instead of one after the other. 

Personally, I have had to do this on several occasions: I deactivate all plugins to troubleshoot the problem and determine whether it’s related to plugin performance or other issues. 

If you can access your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins>Installed Plugins and select “All Plugins.” You don’t need to check each plugin one at a time; you should use the checkbox at the top of the list to select all plugins simultaneously. 

After that, click the “Bulk Action” dropdown menu and select “Deactivate“. Next, click the Apply button next to the Bulk Action link. 

This action will deactivate all the plugins from loading on the site. This method is particularly useful for narrowing down conflicts by reactivating plugins one by one to identify the culprit.

3. Deactivating Plugins via FTP

Let’s assume a fatal error warning occurred on your site, and you can no longer access your site admin page. Also, the WordPress recovery mode didn’t work to log you back in. The next option is to try accessing your site via an FTP program. 

Alternatively, you can do this also via your hosting cPanel File Manager application.

Whether you use a file transfer protocol program or File Manager app depends on your hosting type or knowledge level. 

To use the FTP program, you’ll need your Host server IP, username, password, and connection port. Your web host will supply this information, which you can always find in your hosting account.

If you use Cloudways as your web host, you should see something like this in your account.

Once you have these details, open a file transfer protocol program and supply the server credentials to log in. Next, find the /wp-content/ folder in your root directory. This is the folder that holds your WordPress content, including theme files, plugins, images, etc. 

Mostly, this is the path to reach the plugin folder: /public_html/wp-content/plugins

Once you get to the plugin folder, right-click on it and select rename. Rename this folder to anything you can think of that makes it easy for you to remember. WordPress will automatically deactivate your site plugins once it can’t find a folder named “Plugins.” 

Here is a key point to note. You don’t need to delete the plugins folder; just rename it to something else. Once done, go back to your site and log in. 

All plugins must have been deactivated by now. Then, you can troubleshoot your site to check if the problem is related to plugins.

Pro Tip: If renaming the folder resolves the issue, you can rename it to its original name later and troubleshoot further.

4. Deactivating Plugins via WP-CLI

For developers or advanced users, WP-CLI (WordPress Command Line Interface) provides a powerful way to manage plugins directly from the command line.

However, you have to be careful when following this route to deactivate WordPress plugins. If you’re not a developer or advanced WordPress user, don’t try this method; you will break your site along the way. 

Whatever, ensure you back up your site before proceeding. Here are the steps to follow:

Access WP-CLI.

Log in to your server via SSH and navigate to your WordPress installation. Next, run the Deactivate Command.

Use the following command to deactivate a specific plugin:

wp plugin deactivate plugin-name

You can use this command for every plugin you need to deactivate

Check the Plugin Status.

You can confirm the plugin’s status by running the following:

wp plugin status

If you follow accordingly, you should have your plugin deactivated by now.

What Happens After You Deactivate a Plugin?

First, deactivating a plugin doesn’t delete it from your site. The plugin’s files, settings, and data remain intact unless you delete or uninstall the plugin entirely. 

This is especially useful when you’re troubleshooting or testing new plugins. 

In some rare situations, even a deleted plugin can leave behind a folder path, making it impossible to reinstall the plugin in the future. In such a case, you’ll need to delete the plugin folder using an FTP application, just as we did in the above section. 

Anyway, here are some steps to take once you deactivate a plugin from your site.

• Check Your Site’s Functionality – Ensure everything is working smoothly. Check your site thoroughly for functions, web forms, buttons, sidebars, navigation, tables, etc.
• Decide Whether to Reactivate or Delete—If you no longer need the plugin, consider deleting it to reduce clutter and improve site performance. It is good practice to keep the minimum number of resources on your site, including the plugin list. If a plugin is not actively needed for your site to function, don’t keep it. 
• Test Performance and Speed—Depending on the plugin’s function, consider testing your site performance and speed with tools like PageSpeed Insights and GTMetrix. This is necessary if the plugin’s functionality helps improve performance, user experience, and loading time. 

FAQs

Conclusion

Plugin management is essential to maintaining a healthy WordPress site, but you can not help it when a plugin causes conflict or performance issues. This is common in WordPress, and you should be ready to learn how to deactivate WordPress plugins to provide solutions whenever necessary. 

Deactivating plugins—whether through the dashboard, FTP, or other methods—is straightforward and gives you control over your site’s functionality. Whether you’re a beginner, intermediate, or even a WordPress veteran, the methods described in this post offer different options that suit everyone’s knowledge level. 

Remember, if you’re unsure, seek support from your hosting provider or a WordPress expert. Do you have questions or tips to share? Post them in the comments.