In response to Jeff’s post regarding uninstalling plugins, Andrew Rickmann has created a tool that adds an uninstallation option on the plugins page. The uninstall option will only show up if the plugin has been deactivated and if the plugin author has created an uninstall file.
Click image for larger size — Uninstall Option for Hello Dolly
Andrew is unsure of the demand for a tool like this, so please let him know your thoughts on having an uninstall option on the plugins page.
Update Jan 11: Andrew has released a second iteration of the uninstall tool. Click here to check it out.
Plugin of the year. Hands down. I cant wait to see this plug be developed.
This is great! It is very useful for everyone esp for those who does not want to tinker with their database manually.
Fantastic idea. It would be really nice to get a prompt showing which files and tables are going to be deleted prior to doing so, but this could be great!
This the catch:
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Now it is upto the plugin authors to take up the cue!!
On to the plugin Utopia! 🙂
S.K
Much needed plugin…and hope authors take care of having an uninstall file. Most of the time, I end up doing the uninstall manually (drop table etc), but a plugin would surely help
As discussed earlier: IMHO allways the plugin developers are responsible to create a clean uninstall option.
I’ll definitely be supporting this (or something similar) on my future plugins. Kudos to Jeff for bringing this issue up here.
If you install plugins with Matt Read’s Installer, it creates a log of all files installed. The Installer also comes with an uninstaller. So if you installed via Installer (which is common because you don’t have to unzip or use FTP, it’s so much more convenient) you can uninstall from there too.
Sorry to sound mean but this isn’t plugin of the year. Why? Because it requires an uninstall file. And I doubt many plugins will follow that unless it becomes standard (Matt or Alex would have to say something).
Ninjas,
I couldn’t get the page for Installer to load, but I read Lorelle’s review on her blog. It looks like the plugin does a good job of installing and removing plugins, but one of the things Jeff brought up in his post was the database overhead through tables and options. It doesn’t look like Installer will take care of that issue. In the case of database overhead, it will be the plugin author who (hopefully) knows best how to remove their plugin data.
I agree that a majority of plugin authors will not get behind this unless it is officially supported in the core code. But I do think this is a step in the right direction and a good proof of concept.
Have you seen the One Click Install plugin? http://anirudhsanjeev.org/projects/oneclick/
This gives you the option to delete the plugin. It’s also very handy for updating plugins which seem to update fairly regularly.
I haven’t used the uninstall tool here so I don’t know if there’s any extra benefit from it.
Thanks Ronald for shedding some light on this tool. It looks like I need to put together a part 2 of the Uninstalling issue.
I developed the WordPress Plugin Framework (WPF) to allow plugin developers to provide the ability to deactivate and / or uninstall their plugins. You can find out more about the WPF by following the link below.
WordPress Plugin Framework v0.04
We definitely need this type of plugins. I recommend to put it into the core. WordPress need a lot of improvements.
I’m for a plug-in like this. It’s nice for the OC programmers out there to clean out their database, but for the average person I’m not sure how much demand there will be.