With Google pushing for speed, caching plugins like WP Rocket become popular among WordPress bloggers. Generally, WP Rocket works seamlessly with popular themes and page builder plugins. However, it can create problems if not setup properly or have conflict with other plugins on your site. if you want to get rid of WP Rocket plugin, here is a complete guide on how to completely delete WP Rocket from your WordPress site.
Why You May Need to Delete WP Rocket Plugin?
The plugin though has simple user interface; however, you may face the following problems with caching and support:
- After setting up WP Rocket, you may find the page speed in Google PageSpeed Insights tool is decreased instead of increasing.
- You find the plugin breaks your site’s layout.
- There are no options for disabling certain features like page caching. The plugin by default cache all pages and you need to install additional helper plugins to disable page caching.
- Newly introduced features like remove unused CSS will create tables that will increase the size of your database.
- Mobile caching can create problems with non-responsive sites especially with ecommerce stores created with WooCommerce plugin.
- Critical CSS, remove unused CSS options will create render blocking resources problems instead of improving the speed in mobile.
- If you are using SiteGround hosting, you have a free SG Optimizer plugin that offers similar WP Rocket features. Hence, you may want to get rid of WP Rocket setup. Similarly, many hosting companies offer custom caching solution and WP Rocket may not work efficiently or will become redundant.
- Deteriorated support from the developer that you need to wait for 3 days to get a response. Previously, you can raise a ticket right from the WordPress admin panel. However, now you need to login to their website and raise an issue. Unfortunately, you will not even get a courtesy email after raising a ticket and there are no way to track what is the status of your issue unless they respond.
Whatsoever is the reason, cleaning up WP Rocket residues on your site is a big task than you think.
Delete WP Rocket Plugin from Your WordPress Site
In our earlier article, we have explained how to get rid of W3 Total Cache plugin from your site. Caching plugins like W3 Total Cache and WP Rocket creates many folders, install drop-ins plugin, insert directives in htaccess file and create cache folders. Unfortunately, simply deleting the plugin will not completely delete all these residues left over by the plugin. You have to manually clean up them in order to remove the plugin from your installation.
If the latest update created problem for your site, then it is a good idea to rollback WP Rocket plugin instead of deleting completely. You can rollback to the previous major version by navigating to “Settings > WP Rocket > Tools” section in WordPress admin panel. You will see a “Reinstall Version Number” button under “Rollback” section and click on it to revert the plugin to previous major version.
Follow the below steps to get rid of WP Rocket plugin completely from your WordPress installation.
Step1 – Deactivate Any Other Caching Plugin
Almost all caching plugins use some common setup like using drop-ins plugin and adding entries in wp-config.php file. Hence, uninstalling WP Rocket and deleting related files will affect commonly used functions with other caching plugin. In general, caching plugin should regenerate entries and add drop-ins plugin.
However, in order to avoid confusion, first deactivate any other caching plugins on your site before deleting WP Rocket. Later, you can activate the other caching plugin that should insert the required entries and create drop-ins.
Step2 – Uninstall and Delete Plugin
As a first step, you need to uninstall the plugin from your WordPress site.
- Login to your admin panel and go to “Settings > WP Rocket > Dashboard” section and clear you cached files first.
- Then navigate to “Plugins > Installed Plugins” section and click “Deactivate” under “WP Rocket” plugin.
- Select “Click & Deactivate” button to deactivate the plugin.
- After that, click on “Delete” option to remove it from your site.
Though this should uninstall and delete all plugin related files, check the followings to make sure there are no left over from the plugin.
Step3 – Delete Drop-ins Plugin
When activating WP Rocket plugin, it will also install “advanced-cache.php” file. This is a drop-ins plugin with a single php file that you can see under “Plugins > Installed Plugins > Drop-ins” section. If you see the file still exists, make sure to delete it after deleting WP Rocket plugin.
Step4 – Delete Cached Content
WP Rocket will create two folders under “/wp-content/” folder which you should delete if exist.
- Login to FTP and navigate to “/wp-content/” folder.
- Delete “/wp-content/cache/” folder which contains all cached pages on your site.
- Also, delete “/wp-content/wp-rocket-config/ folder that contains all plugin’s settings.
Note, you can also delete “advanced-cache.php” drop-ins file here.
Step5 – Remove htaccess Entries
WP Rocket adds GZIP compression, browser caching and many other directives in htaccess file. These parameters will overwrite any other caching setup available on the server.
- When you are remotely logged in to your server, navigate to the root of your WordPress installation. This should be generally “/public-html/” folder unless you have installed WordPress in subdirectory.
- Find and open .htaccess file with a code editor apps like Visual Studio Code. Remember, this file may not visible as it has no name with only having an extension. Therefore, you need to make the hidden files visible in your FTP software for editing the file.
- Check any entries existing in the file between #BEGIN WP ROCKET and #END WP ROCKET block. You can safely delete the block, save the file and upload the modified file back into the server.
Test your site is working properly to make sure there are no issues with other .htaccess entries.
Step6 – Clean Up wp-config.php File
You also need to delete an entry from wp-config.php file created by WP Rocket plugin.
- When you are logged into the server with FTP, navigate to the root installation directory.
- Find “wp-config.php” file and edit it using a code editor.
- Check the following line and delete it.
define('WP_CACHE', true)
Step7 – Delete Cached WebP Images
WP Rocket allows you to cache WebP image format separately to improve the loading speed. You need to check and delete these cached image files from your “/wp-content/uploads/” folder. This step is not required if you have a plugin that generates WebP image and stores them in uploads folder. However, many hosting companies will NOT store WebP images in “uploads” folder. They will generate WebP images on the fly and directly serve to the browser. In this case, if you have enabled WebP caching option, the plugin will create a duplication of each image you have uploaded in your site.
When you uninstall WP Rocket, these cached WebP images will become redundant and useless. You can either leave them as it is or delete them to save storage space on your server. Make sure to test your server dynamically serves WebP images after deleting WP Rocket cached images.
Note: You can also delete and edit files using File Manager app from hosting account instead of using FTP.
Step8 – Delete Database Entries
WP Rocket will create entries in wp_options table for storing settings and other relevant entries. Similarly, the plugin will also create additional tables when you use remove unused CSS feature.
- Login to your hosting account and open phpMyAdmin app.
- Locate your database and navigate to wp_options table.
- Search the table with “rocket” and delete the entries you find.
- Select the tables “wp_ wpr_rucss_resources” and “wp_ wpr_rucss_used_css” and delete them.
Final Words
As you can see, WP Rocket plugin creates many entries and folders for improving the speed. For example, enabling remove unused CSS option will create big tables in database. Unfortunately, you will not find these details on the sales page of the plugin. We hope this article helped you to completely delete WP Rocket plugin from your WordPress site.
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