Infyways Solutions

How to Uninstall Joomla (Extensions or the Whole Site) in Joomla 5 & 6

joomla remove uninstall

Written by

Abhilash Sahoo

in

There are two things people mean by “uninstall Joomla”: removing one extension from a Joomla site, or deleting the whole Joomla installation from hosting. Both are covered here for Joomla 4, 5 and 6.

Uninstall an extension

  1. Go to System → Manage → Extensions.
  2. Search for the extension and tick it. Packages (type “Package”) remove all their parts at once, so uninstall the package rather than each plugin or module.
  3. Click Uninstall and confirm.
  4. Clear the cache (System → Clear Cache) and check the front end.

Core extensions are protected and cannot be uninstalled; disable them instead. If an uninstall fails with an SQL error, check System → Maintenance → Database.

Delete a whole Joomla site with Softaculous or an installer

If Joomla was installed with Softaculous, Installatron or a similar tool in cPanel or Plesk, remove it there: open the installer, go to All Installations, click the delete (X) icon next to the site and tick “remove database” and “remove directory”. This deletes files, the database and the database user in one go.

Delete a Joomla site manually

  1. Back up first (see how to back up Joomla); deleted files cannot be recovered from Joomla.
  2. Open configuration.php and note the values of $db, $user and $dbprefix.
  3. In the file manager or over SFTP, delete the Joomla folder (or its contents if it is the site root, keeping anything that is not Joomla).
  4. In cPanel → MySQL Databases (or phpMyAdmin), delete that database and its user. If the database is shared with another app, drop only the tables that start with your prefix.
  5. Remove any cron jobs, email forwarders or subdomains you created for the site.

Moving instead of deleting?

If you want to move the site to new hosting or a new domain, do not delete it until the copy works. See how to transfer Joomla to a new host. Switching platform? See Joomla to WordPress migration.

Related Joomla guides

Need hands-on help? See our Joomla support and maintenance.

Frequently asked questions

How do I completely remove Joomla from cPanel?

If Softaculous installed it, delete it from All Installations with “remove database” ticked. Otherwise delete the Joomla folder and then the database and its user in MySQL Databases.

Why can’t I uninstall some Joomla extensions?

Core extensions are protected. Disable them instead of uninstalling.

Does uninstalling an extension delete its data?

Usually yes; most extensions drop their tables on uninstall. Export anything you need first.

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