How to Uninstall Joomla

If you’re reading this article because you want to reinstall Joomla, then check this article on how to reinstall Joomla.

Sometimes you may wish to just uninstall Joomla from your server for one of the following reasons:

  • You want to move your Joomla website to another server and you wish to remove all the information pertaining to this website with your current host.
  • Your initial installation was faulty and you want to redo everything from scratch.
  • You just want to get rid of your Joomla website!

Well, the process is fairly simple, here’s how you can do it:

  • Login to your website’s FTP, and delete all the Joomla folders and files. Make sure you don’t delete folders that do not belong to your Joomla website. This process may take a long time if you have a lot of extensions installed and/or a lot of images/files in your website.

  • Go to phpMyAdmin, and drop the database that contains the data of your Joomla website. Make sure you don’t drop a shared database (a database that is shared by different websites, where the only difference is the table prefix).

  • Go to the “Cron Jobs” page (or Cron Manager) in your cPanel and remove all crons associated with your Joomla website.

  • That’s it!

If you need help uninstalling your Joomla website, or if you think that the process is intimidating, then we’re here to help. Just contact us and we’ll do it for you.

Tips

  • If you’re afraid of doing the process, then don’t do it, and ask for help by Joomla professionals (such as, ahem, us!). Remember, if something can go wrong then it’ll definitely go wrong!
  • If you’re unsure about a file or a directory, then don’t delete it, and, again, ask for help by Joomla professionals.
  • This process will not remove email accounts pertaining to your Joomla domain.
4 Responses to “How to Uninstall Joomla”
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  1. Comment by Nicci — July 8, 2014 @ 11:45 am

    Hi there,

    I’m trying to delete the site that was created with Joomla, and replace it with one that is made with Muse via FTP. Is there a way to “overwrite” a website? Not sure about how this part works, just the designer! Thanks in advance for your help.

    Nicci

  2. Comment by Fadi — July 11, 2014 @ 8:59 am

    Hi Nicci,

    It’s better to delete the whole Joomla folder altogether prior to uploading your new website, as overwriting it might work but might cause problems down the road.

  3. Comment by Nicole — December 9, 2014 @ 8:52 am

    Hello there,

    I’ve been busy with my website for the past few days, but I think I deleted something very important (i’m not sure what) in my website’s ftp.

    I made a mistake in the design and ended up deleting configuration.php file. I thought it was innocent but then my website decided to stop working and I have this error which I can’t seem to fix. The error is: Error displaying the error page: Application Instantiation Error.

    I already tried removing all the Joomla files and the database, but nothing seems te work.

    Any ideas?

    Nicole

  4. Comment by Fadi — December 9, 2014 @ 3:27 pm

    Hi Nicole,

    All you need to do is to re-generate the configuration.php file of your website. Please contact us if you need help with this.

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