How To: Delete an Unused WordPress Theme

It’s easy to accumulate unused themes in your WordPress environment. Each year, the WordPress team releases a new default theme that is named after the year and this gets added automatically when you update WordPress. And, how many of you have installed themes to check them out and have a play, only to realise they didn’t meet your needs at the time? I know I have!

Here’s the thing: themes can take up anywhere between 1MB and 10MB of disk space, so having a whole heap of inactive ones on your WordPress environment can weigh it down. Plus, in the same way you would declutter your home and office, it just makes sense to do the same for your virtual money making space too. I mean, why wouldn’t you want a well oiled machine that is optimised and working optimially?!

Here’s how you can remove the themes you aren’t using:

Step 1: From your WordPress admin area, select Appearance

Step 2: Go to Themes

Step 3: Select Theme Details for the theme you want to remove

Step 4: Select Delete (comes up in the bottom-right corner of your window)

A couple of things before you start your housekeeping process:

• Leave the default theme on there, along with the one you are actively using. This way, if your theme goes wonky during an update or something, WordPress is able to fall back on that default theme.
• Before you do any major housekeeping on your site, run a backup cos you never know!