Manually remove and re-install Wordpress

Asked by:
Dhorlo / 5 Points
Time:
2012-12-13 8:29 am EST
Category:
Wordpress
Hits:
830
I am taking over duties as webmaster for our club and, looking at the folder structure of my public_html folder, it seems there are WP folders indicating that WordPress was at some point in use. (The original webmaster is not available for any insight.)

I've tried to access the admin panels but I get page errors trying to login.

I'm planing on using WP for the site so I'd like to "nuke and pave" the existing site completely.

I've tried to sync the WP install through Softaculous, to uninstall it, but it throws an error. There is no Fantastico de Luxe installed and no WP application install on WHH, so nothing to uninstall via Softaculous.

What would be my best method to fully remove all traces of WP from my directories, manually, and install a fresh, clean WordPress site?

Thanks for any help.

To ask this user for more information, please first login.

To submit an answer, please login.

Best answer chosen by User

0

JacobN
Staff
3,713 Points
2012-12-13 5:49 pm EST
Hello Dhorlo, and thanks a lot for the question.

Typically the best way to remove and reinstall WordPress would be to copy down the database settings from your current wp-config.php file, then you can download the latest version of WordPress and use those database settings in the new wp-config.php file.

In your case though, it doesn't appear that you have a previous wp-config.php file, nor some of the other default WordPress related files.

I do see that you have a WordPress MySQL database still configured on the server. So probably your best bet would be to remove everything from your /public_html/ directory that you don't need and do a fresh WordPress install with Softaculous.

If you wanted anything from the old site you would need to either login directly to phpMyAdmin and look through the wp_posts table for instance to look at the WordPress posts stored there. Or you could add a database user to the old MySQL database so that you know the proper password since you can't get it from an old wp-config.php file. Then you could use those database credentials to connect your WordPress install that you did through Softaculous to the old database by adding them in the wp-config.php file.

However this would also require you to login to phpMyAdmin from cPanel. Then you would need to navigate to the wp_users table, edit the admin user, and reset the password so that you can get into the WordPress admin dashboard. When you type in the password in the user_pass field you would also need to select MD5 from the Function field.

Currently as the site isn't actively using the old WordPress database anywhere, you could also simply elect to do a new WordPress install through Softaculous and just remove the old database and start completely from fresh.

I hope this information was helpful, if you have any further questions at all or need something explained in further detail please don't hesitate to ask.

- Jacob

To submit a comment on this answer, please first login.

Want to share this Question?

Related Articles

It looks like there are no related articles.
Would you like to ask a question about this page? If so, click the button below!
Need More Help?

Help Center Search

Current Customers

Email: support@WebHostingHub.com Ticket: Submit a Support Ticket
Call: 877-595-4HUB (4482)
757-416-6627 (Intl.)
Chat: Click To Chat Now

Ask the Community

Get help with your questions from our community of like-minded hosting users and Web Hosting Hub Staff.

Not a Customer?

Get web hosting from a company that is here to help.
}