WordPress is one of the popular content management systems (CMS) using which you can manage a website all in one place with any knowledge of web development or database management. Lots of complicated web designing processes can be done with some simple clicks. Also, you don’t have to do all this process alone, because WordPress lets you add multiple users to design, manage, maintain, and edit your website at the same. More importantly, the admin can assign some particular roles to the users to restrict him/her only to a particular process. But what if you need to remove all the users from the website at a time. Here is how you can bulk delete WordPress users from both Database and CMS.
Ways to Bulk Delete WordPress Users
There are three possible ways to delete users from your WordPress in bulk and they are
- Without Plugin
- With Plugin
- From Database
Steps to Bulk Delete WordPress Users Without Plugin
WordPress by default has the features to bulk delete posts and users from its dashboard itself.
[1] From your WordPress dashboard, click on Users. [2] Choose All Users from the expanded menu.
Note: To select all the users from WordPress, click on Check the box near the Username heading.
Before deleting, if the user has any content on the website published under his username, you need to change the content Attribute to any other user in the database. If you have deleted it by mistake, you can retrieve it back from the backup if one is done. Check out our guide on how to backup the complete WordPress Database.
Once deleted, the user no longer is able to log in to WordPress with the username. Also, if you planning on change the role, instead of deleting the user profile you can change the user role from the Change role to… option and click on Change.
Steps to Bulk Delete WordPress Users With Plugin
Without the plugin, you can only delete or change the role of the user. But with the plugin, the options are vast like schedule removal, filter remove based on various factors, and many more.
[1] Go to the Plugin section from your WordPress dashboard. [2] Click on Add New and search for Bulk Delete Plugin.
You can also try using another bulk deletion plugin named WP Bulk Delete to proceed with the deletion process.
Steps to Bulk Delete WordPress Users from Database
You can also delete the user database from the cPanel of your website. Login to your cPanel >> Database >> Site folder >> wp_user >> Select the particular or whole user from the database >> Delete. Now you have successfully deleted the user from the database. If you have changed the database folder prefix to something else for security purposes then try deleting the file from that particular folder.
Conclusion
These are some of the possible ways to delete users in bulk on WordPress. If you are planning on deleting users based on some criteria then choose a plugin. If not, then save your server space by using the default WordPress feature which is simple and quicker compared to some third-party plugins. If you have any queries let us know in the comments section below.
