Delete WordPress Site Permanently

How to delete WordPress site Permanently?

One of our readers recently asked the question: Can I permanently remove a WordPress site from the Internet? The fact is that simply deleting the installed system does not remove the site completely from the vast expanse of the web. In this article, we will tell you how to get rid of the site on the Internet forever.

Why should you permanently remove a site from the Internet?

You can delete WordPress files from your server, and the site will be unavailable. However, it can still occur in the form of search results, slashed screenshots, and Internet archives. So, removing a site from the Internet is not the easiest thing, given that there are thousands of sites that collect content from other resources. However, by following the steps in this article, you can make it harder to access the content of your remote site. Keep in mind that the article is written about removing a self-installed WordPress (see the article, what is the difference between a site WordPress.org on its hosting and a blog on WordPress.com). Now that we’ve warned you let’s finally figure out how to cut your site out of the Internet. Here’s a list of steps you’ll need to take.

Step 1: Back up your site, The first thing you need to do is back up your site. This needs to be done even if you want to destroy your site once and for all. Perhaps in the future, some of its content may be useful to you.

Step 2: Delete WordPress files Delete all Files related to WordPress from the server. You can do this by going to your hosting control panel and then clicking on the File Manager icon.

File Manager - Delete WordPress
File Manager – Delete WordPress

The file manager allows you to control files hosted on your server through the web interface. You can also clean with an FTP client. If the word FTP gives you a question-and-answer look, we advise you to contact our FTP guide

Step 3: Deny search engines access to Robots.txt Now that you’ve deleted your site, it’s time to stop search engines from climbing it. We will use the robots.txt file to prevent search engines from collecting information about our site. First, you will need to create a new file called robots.txt, using cPanel or FTP. When you create a file, you’ll need to edit it and add the following lines: User-agent: Disallow: / These two lines block search bots from accessing links under your domain name.

Step 4: We remove content from search engines Although your content no longer exists, search engines can continue to show it for some time. They “think” that your site may be experiencing technical problems and will soon be back on its feet. Therefore, you will need to clarify to search engines that your site is not available and will no longer be. The easiest way to do this is to use the .htaccess file. To do this, you will need to create a file with the appropriate name in your site’s root directory. Then you’ll need to add the following code to it:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/robots.txt

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com$ [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ - [L,G]

Don’t forget to replace example.com with your website. This code will redirect all requests to your site and issue a 410 error. However, it will still allow search spiders to get a top to the robots.txt file.

410 Gone Error - Delete WordPress
410 Gone Error – Delete WordPress

However, despite all this, the process may take some time. You can speed up this whole thing by requesting the cache to be removed.

Remove screenshots of the site from Wayback Machine

The Wayback Machine (WB) website is the largest archive of websites on the Internet. Its repository contains cached versions of millions of sites. Anyone can go to this resource and see a cached screenshot of any site.

Wayback Machine - Delete WordPress
Wayback Machine – Delete WordPress

The best way to remove screenshots of your site is to contact the Archive.org administration and ask them to remove your content. In this way, you can be sure that your site’s screenshots will never be available on this resource again. Even when your domain expires and another person acquires it, Archive.org will no longer cache that site. On this, all hope that the article has helped you remove the site forever.

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