Every website owner has met with this situation with their website – the need for a clean slate. With time, all websites become crowded with old data, plugins and themes the admin simply has no time to delete one by one. The solution is to reset the website – plain and simple.
However, the options here are various. The admin can reset the website manually – which is neither cost nor time efficient as well as quite jeopardizing for the crucial website data. Another option is to use add-ons designed for this purpose – such as WP Reset.
What is WP Reset
This is a tool designed for developers who want to avoid the hassle of trading carefully with the website data. This plugin makes the whole process easier simply by limiting the number of steps to be undertaken for resetting a website. The whole process takes a few seconds!
The plugin actually deletes posts, comments, users, pages and media entries (but does not touch the site title, address, language and visibility settings), and all custom and default WP database tables (but leaves the plugins, themes and uploads and media files).
It is also important to mention database snapshot. This is a copy of all WP database tables, which are saved in the presently-used database. Snapshots are development tool, thus the files are not saved nor included here. The developers advise using snapshots to see the changes made by a plugin to the database, rather than using them as backup (although this is an option).
Snapshots can also be used for fast restoring the development environment after completing the testing related to database changes. They can also be compared to database tables, restored and exported ad gzipped SQL dumps, and deleted. The best part of this is that it only takes a few seconds to create a snapshot on an average WP installation.
Additional information
The plugin has excellent support team on its official forum, and additional information available on wpreset.com.
The plugin is constantly under development, and the list of its upcoming features is available on the roadmap. It is worth mentioning that the developers are working on the following features:
- Plugins and themes collections – for creating a collection of themes and plugins for installing after completing the reset
- Nuclear reset – for deleting all files, custom database entries and tables
- WordPress Network – with this feature individual tools can be used for reset from the network admin
- Change WP Version – for downgrading WordPress to an older version or upgrading it to a new beta version with one click
The plugin also has partial reset tools – which is an excellent option for admins who need to delete only parts of a website. The following partial reset tools are available:
- Delete transients – for all transient related database entries (expired and non-expired ones)
- Delete uploads – for all files located in folder /uploads/
- Delete plugins – for all plugins except WP Reset (remains active)
- Reset Theme options – for all options of all themes (apart from the ones using WP theme mods API)
- Delete themes – for all themes
- Empty or delete custom tables – for all custom database tables
- Delete .htaccess files – the developers recommend using WP Htaccess Editor plugin if the admin only needs to edit the .htaccess file
The plugin also has WP-CPI support, thus the first user with admin privileges in the database is restored after the reset is complete. The developers advise caution when using this plugin with WP-CLI, since there is no undo in this case.
Conclusion
In the end there isn’t much left to be said about this plugin. Any admin that maintains websites for a longer period of time will find themselves in need of a similar plugin, so why not use this one – it is free! The plugin also has excellent reviews and responsive support team ready to answer any inquiry.
This is an excellent plugin for any type of cleaning required to be done on a website, as well as testing without the danger of losing important data stored on the website.
If you liked WP Reset, don’t forget to check other plugins from Web Factory like UnderConstructionPage, Google Maps Widget, Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode as well as Security Ninja.
