How to Uninstall W3 Total Cache Manually

If W3 Total Cache is causing issues, or throwing error messages, you may need to delete it manually.

I this article I’ll show you how to delete W3 Total Cache manually and ensure that any other erroneous files are deleted too, enabling you to install a fresh working copy of W3 Total Cache or any other caching plugin.

If you need help installing W3 Total Cache properly, I highly recommend my detailed guide that configures W3 Total Cache to work with CloudFlare for ultimate performance..

How to Uninstall W3 Total Cache Manually

Turn off all Caching under General Settings
In the General Settings turn off all the following settings:
- Preview mode - Disable
- Page Cache - Disable
- Minify - Disable
- Database Cache - Disable
- Object Cache - Disable
- Browser Cache - Disable
- CDN - Disable
Make sure you click “Save all settings” once you are done.
At the top of the General Settings page you will now see a message confirming that “The plugin is currently disabled.”
Doing this step will remove some configuration settings that are commonly left behind, although, I will show you later in this tutorial how to check for these files manually.
Deactivate and Delete W3 Total Cache
- Go to the Plugins Menu in the WordPress admin sidebar
- Click “Deactive” under the W3 Total Cache Plugin
- Click “Delete”
Check the following files are deleted and if not delete manually
There are some core files that are used by most Caching Plugins and sometimes by other plugins not related to caching. These files are located in the “wp-content” directory:
- cache folder
- w3tc-config folder
- object-cache.php (if exists)
- advanced-cache.php (if exists)
- dbcache.php (if exists)
- upgrade folder
In addition you should delete the following:
- w3-total-cache folder in wp-content/plugins/ (if exists)
To delete the files you will need to log in to your server via SSH, FTP, or via your Control Panel File Manager.
Remove entries in your .htacess file created by W3 Total Cache
W3TC makes extensive use of the .htacess file. As such you will need to verify all of the entries made by W3TC have been deleted. If you disabled all the Caching functionality before you removed the plugin everything should be ok. It is worth checking, though.
Each entry related to W3 total cache will start and end with comments like:
```
#BEGIN W3TC Page Cache core

#END W3TC Page Cache core
```
If you are unsure which entries were created by W3 Total Cache, then you can delete everything in the .htacess file and replace it with the following if you have a basic installation of WordPress:
```
# BEGIN WordPress
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
# END WordPress
```
If you have a multisite installation, or still use WordPresss 3.4 or below then you can find the default .htaccess settings here.
Purge files from your CDN (if applicable)
If you use a CDN, such as CloudFlare, then you should purge all the files to ensure that any files cached by them are also deleted. This might be necessary if you minimized your files within W3 Total Cache.