How to Restart a WordPress Site
Resetting a WordPress site to its default settings can be a lifesaver.
Whether you’re testing multiple plugins and themes, using a demo site, or simply want to revert your changes.
Why Restart a WordPress Site?
Restarting or resetting WordPress restores it to its default settings.
It will delete everything so you can start over fresh.
Where you might want to restart or reset a WordPress site:
1. You’re using a demo site on your computer.
If you’ve installed WordPress on localhost, then you might want to reset it after you’ve built a site and moved it from localhost to a live server.
If you’re a developer and constantly test themes and plugins on your local install.
2. You’ve been working on a new site and want to start over.
Maybe you’ve been busy creating a blog or website, but you are not happy with the customizations.
3. You’re going to rework a client’s website.
If they want something very different from what’s already there, then you might need to reset WordPress on the staging server to start from scratch.
4. You’re learning about WordPress, hands-on.
Maybe you’ve had a go at developing your plugins or themes, or you’ve been experimenting with a starter theme.
How to Restart and Reset a WordPress Site
Before you begin, it’s important to create a full backup of your site using a WordPress backup plugin.
This is important in case you want to restore your site from the backup after restarting it.
Duplicator plugin for backups.
It allows you to easily create on-demand backups that you can use to restore your website with one click.
Restart Your WordPress Site with Advanced WordPress Reset
Now you’re ready to move on and restart your WordPress site.
Install and activate the Advanced WordPress Reset plugin.
Once the plugin is activated, you need to go to Tools » Advanced WP Reset in your WordPress dashboard.
Restart your WordPress website by simply typing ‘reset’ in the Reset database field.
Once you’ve entered the text, simply click the ‘Reset database’ button.
When you reset your website, your plugins and theme files are not deleted.
All the plugins are deactivated except for Advanced WordPress Reset.
You can then manually activate each plugin after restarting your website.
Simply go to the Plugins » Installed Plugins page from your WordPress dashboard and click the ‘Activate’ link under the plugin name.
Configuring Custom Reset Options in Advanced WordPress Reset
Aside from restarting your entire website, Advanced WordPress Reset also lets you reset specific items on your website, like comments, or clean the uploads folder.
To reset individual files, you can go to Tools » Advanced WP Reset from your WordPress admin panel and then click the ‘Custom reset’ tab.
Next, you can click the ‘Run reset now’ button to restart different items on your website.
If you used multiple plugins or themes for testing and now want a clean start, then you can delete all the plugins and themes.
Similarly, you can clean the uploads folder and wp-content folder.
The plugin also gives you different options to reset comments on your site.
Simply scroll down to the ‘Reset Comments’ section in the plugin settings.
Here, you can delete all the comments, pending comments, spam comments, trashed comments, pingbacks, and trackbacks with a single click.
If you are unsure about which settings to choose, we recommend leaving these settings as is and using the default reset options instead.
