WordPress has a large number of themes, and it can be difficult to choose just one. You may have experimented with a few different themes to get a feel for the look, or you may have decided to refresh your site and have moved to an updated theme, which means an old and unused theme used during the staging process is still resting in your system.
You may believe that having an unused theme will not harm your system, but WordPress themes are highly vulnerable and are a favorite place for hackers to inject malware into your site. In this blog, we'll go over why you should delete unused WordPress themes, when you should keep them, and the best ways to do so in order to keep your WordPress safe and reliable at all times.
Why You Should Delete Unused WordPress Themes
Before we begin, let's clarify that we're talking about deleting both unused and inactive WordPress themes. The term "inactive themes" refers to themes that have been installed but are not being used. Of course, you could have as many deactivated themes in your system as you want, but this has an effect on the health of your site. Here are some reasons why you should get rid of any unused or inactive WordPress themes:
- Additional themes consume hosting server space because your themes are also a collection of files that require storage, which may require you to pay an additional fee for an unused item.
When you have more inactive themes, it takes more time to create backups, migrate your site, and perform SEO scanning.
WordPress themes are a good host for malware, and having fewer themes reduces site risk.
Outdated WordPress themes pose even greater security risks; you must either keep all themes up to date or risk allowing hackers easy access to your site.
When You Should Keep Deactivated WordPress themes
Yes, it's a good idea to let go of unused and inactive themes, but in some cases, such as the ones listed below, you need to keep them.
- If you have a child theme, you must keep the parent theme installed and deactivated on your WordPress system.
Keeping one or two default themes on hand as a backup in case your primary themes fail.
Two Best Methods to Remove a WordPress Theme
You can either delete the WordPress theme through the administration dashboard or manually through cPanel. The steps are very simple in either case; however, when using a dashboard to delete a theme, you will not be able to delete an active theme.
However, if you do this manually through cPanel, WordPress will attempt to use the next installed theme after you delete an active theme. If no active installed themes are found, you must manually install a new WordPress theme. We recommend reading the article How to Disable and Delete WordPress Themes for a step-by-step guide on how to delete or disable themes effectively.
Conclusion
As this blog has highlighted, while it may be easier to simply keep installed WordPress themes because they appear to be harmless, they actually pose a security risk and consume storage space, which may have an impact on cost and performance. Always double-check that you are not deleting an active theme, and make a backup before deleting theme files as a precaution. If you have any further questions or encounter any problems while deleting the WordPress theme, please contact Hosting.com Guru Crew; our team of experts is available around the clock to assist you in the best way possible.
