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Deleting BuddyPress
So you』ve decided to stop using BuddyPress. That』s too bad. If something went wrong during your installation or if you ran into its 「limitations」 make sure to check out:
– The Support Forum for help
– The Plugin Directory for awesome BuddyPress plugins.
If you still want to stop using BuddyPress you can just follow these steps below.
Step 1: Disable all BuddyPress related plugins.
It』s a good idea to start with disabling and removing all the plugins on your site which need BuddyPress to function. Certain older plugins might give you a blank page when being active without BuddyPress being enabled. Go to your admin panel and visit the Plugins page. Disable all the plugins related to BuddyPress.
Step 2: Disable BuddyPress and delete the plugin files.
Once again go to your Plugin page and disable BuddyPress the same way as you disable the BuddyPress related plugins. Click the 「disable」 button and you now have disabled BuddyPress.
If you encounter a white page after disabling BuddyPress take a close look at your plugins. Are you sure none of them need BuddyPress to function? If you』re sure that no BuddyPress related plugins are active check if the currently active Theme is not a BuddyPress Theme. If you do have a BuddyPress Theme as your active theme, rename or delete the theme from your Theme folder, so that WordPress resets to the default theme.
Finally you can remove the BuddyPress files by clicking on the 「delete」 button on the plugin page.
You have now successfully removed BuddyPress!
Advanced Optional Step: Removing the database tables
Warning: Make sure to backup your database first! Making a mistake during this process can result in a broken or entirely removed database! If you are not comfortable using PHPMyAdmin do not even go here. Mistakes are made fast so be careful! A guide to backing up a WP DB can be found here: codex.wordpress.org/Backing_Up_Your_Database
Open up PHPMyAdmin through your webhosting panel (cPanel, Plesk or any other system) and visit your WordPress database. Select all the database tables that have WP_BP_ as prefix. If you have chosen a different table prefix during your WordPress installation they can be named differently. The structure is always like this: [table prefix]_BP_
If you have BuddyPress dependent plugins installed you might want to scan your database for any additional unneeded tables, but make sure you』re not dropping a table which is needed for a plugin to function!
When you』ve selected all these tables use the dropdown at the bottom of the page and select 「Drop Tables」 and press the 「Go」 button.
BuddyPress is now completely removed including its database tables.
Advanced Optional Step: Removing BuddyPress』 options from the wp_options table
Warning: Make sure to backup your database first! Making a mistake during this process can result in a broken or entirely removed database! If you are not comfortable using PHPMyAdmin do not even go here. Mistakes are made fast so be careful! A guide to backing up a WP DB can be found here: codex.wordpress.org/Backing_Up_Your_Database
N.B. An additional step that you might like to take if editing tables and working in phpMyAdmin is to use it』s ability to make a full copy of an existing DB under a new name, doing this allows you to simply switch your wp-config DB entry to point to the copied DB for a quick recovery should things go wrong; you are, however, still advised to take a sql backup dump as well for total peace of mind.
Open up PHPMyAdmin through your webhosting panel (cPanel, Plesk or any other system) and visit your WordPress database.
Navigate to the WordPress options table. (By default, this is the 「wp_options」 table, but might be different if you changed your database prefix.)
Next, find the following entries under the option_name column:
bp-db-version (for BuddyPress 1.5)
_bp_db_version (as of BuddyPress 1.6)
bp-active-components
bp-blogs-first-install
bp-deactivated-components
bp-disable-account-deletion
bp-disable-avatar-uploads
bp-disable-blogforum-coments
bp-disable-profile-sync
bp-pages
bp-xprofile-base-group-name
bp-xprofile-fullname-field-name
And delete them from the database.