How to Restart Your WordPress Site (or Reset It)

"Restart WordPress" means at least four different things, and the gap between them is the difference between a two minute fix and deleting your website. Somebody whose site is throwing a 500 error wants the server restarted. Somebody planning a rebrand wants a reset. Follow the wrong guide and you will drop the database of a site that only needed its cache cleared. So before you restart your WordPress site, this starts by working out which job you are actually doing.

Restart, reset, reinstall or reboot?

The words get used interchangeably and they should not be. Find your row before you do anything else.

Most people typing "how to restart my WordPress site" want the first row. Most articles answering them describe the second. That mismatch is why this one is split.

If you want the site working again without losing anything, the next section is yours. If you genuinely want to wipe it and start over, skip ahead to resetting WordPress. And if the server itself is down, that is your host's control panel or their support team, not WordPress at all.

How to restart your WordPress site without deleting anything

This is the WordPress restart most people are actually looking for: the site is misbehaving, and you want it back to a working state without touching your content. Work down these in order. Each is reversible and none of them removes anything you have written.

1. Clear every cache

The single most common reason a site looks broken after a change, and the reason a change you made appears not to have worked. There are usually three layers and you need all of them.

1. Your caching plugin, from its own settings screen.
2. Your host's server cache, which is separate and often forgotten.
3. Your CDN, if you use Cloudflare or similar.

Then load the site in a private window, which bypasses your own browser cache. Our guide to clearing WordPress cache covers the order and the plugins.

2. Restart PHP

PHP runs your site, and it can end up in a bad state after a configuration change or a crash without WordPress knowing anything is wrong. Restarting it takes seconds and drops nothing.

On most shared hosting there is a button. In cPanel it is under Select PHP Version, or your host may offer "Restart PHP" directly. On a managed WordPress host, support will do it in one reply, and many panels expose it as "Restart PHP workers".

On your own server, with root access:

sudo systemctl restart php8.4-fpm

Change the version to match what you are running. If you are not sure, our guide to checking your PHP version covers finding it, and the version number matters here because restarting the wrong service does nothing.

3. Turn every plugin off, then on again

The oldest trick there is, and it still resolves more problems than anything else on this list. A plugin conflict does not announce itself, and this is how you find it.

Deactivate all plugins from Plugins, Installed Plugins, using the bulk action. Load the site. If it works, reactivate them one at a time, checking after each. The one that breaks it is your answer.

If you cannot get into the dashboard at all, rename wp-content/plugins to plugins-off over FTP. WordPress cannot find any plugins, so it deactivates them all, and renaming the folder back restores them. Deactivating a plugin does not delete its settings, so nothing is lost either way.

4. Switch to a default theme

Same logic, applied to the theme. Activate Twenty Twenty-Five under Appearance, Themes. The site will look wrong and it will tell you whether the theme was the problem, which is the trade you want while diagnosing.

If a theme update caused this, our guide on what to do when a theme update breaks your site covers the recovery routes in more detail.

5. Reinstall WordPress core, keeping your content

Worth knowing because the name frightens people away from it. Reinstalling core replaces WordPress's own files and does not touch your posts, pages, images, users or settings, all of which live in the database and the uploads folder.

Go to Dashboard, then Updates, and click Reinstall version 7.1. Or over SSH:

wp core download --force

This fixes a corrupted or partially modified core install, and it is a genuinely safe thing to do. It is the last of the no-loss options.

If you have worked through all five and the site is still wrong, the problem is specific rather than general, and resetting will not diagnose it for you.

Before you reset WordPress

Everything from here on destroys data. This section is the part people skip and regret, and it takes about twenty minutes.

Take a backup, then prove it works

Not the one your host says exists. Download a full backup, files and database, and keep it somewhere off the server. Then, if you possibly can, restore it to a staging site and confirm it comes back.

An untested backup is a hope, not a plan, and the moment after a reset is exactly when you find out which one you had. Our guide to backing up WordPress covers what a real backup includes.

Export anything you want to keep

Go to Tools, then Export, and download the XML file. It holds your posts, pages and comments, and it can be imported into the fresh install afterwards. Handy if you are resetting to clear out plugin clutter rather than to bin the content.

Media is not included in a useful form, so download the wp-content/uploads folder separately over FTP.

Write down what you will need to put back

Five minutes now, and it saves an afternoon:

• Licence keys for premium plugins and themes. These are the single most common thing people lose, and recovering them means finding an old order email.
• Your permalink structure, from Settings then Permalinks. Getting this wrong afterwards changes every URL on the site.
• Analytics and Search Console verification, whichever method you used.
• Your plugin and theme list. A screenshot of the plugins page is enough.
• Anything hard-coded in a child theme's functions.php or a snippets plugin. See our piece on child themes for why that code deserves its own folder.

Check nobody else is relying on the site

If it takes orders, bookings or enquiries, a reset loses everything not yet exported. Check for pending orders and unread form submissions first, and do the work at your quietest hour rather than at eleven on a Monday morning.

How to reset WordPress: three ways to get a fresh install

Pick by the access you have rather than by how technical you feel. All three arrive at the same place.

1. A reset plugin, which is the easiest

WP Reset is the established option and is actively maintained, with its most recent update in August 2026 and support for the current WordPress release.

1. Install and activate it from Plugins, Add New.
2. Go to Tools, then WP Reset.
3. Take its snapshot first. It stores a copy of the database that you can roll back to, which is a genuine safety net and is not a substitute for the backup you already took.
4. Scroll to Site Reset, type reset in the confirmation box, and click the button.

You stay logged in and land on a fresh install. Note what it leaves behind: files are untouched, so your plugins and themes are still on disk, just deactivated. That is convenient if you are decluttering and not what you want if you are trying to remove something suspicious.

2. WP-CLI, which is the fastest

If you have SSH, this is seconds rather than minutes, and it has one option the other methods do not.

To clear the content but keep your users, settings, plugins and themes exactly as they are, use wp site empty:

wp site empty --yes

That truncates the posts, comments and terms tables. Your site configuration and user accounts are not affected, which makes it the gentlest reset available. Add --uploads to delete the media files as well:

wp site empty --uploads --yes

If you run a persistent object cache, flush it afterwards, because the cached values now point at content that no longer exists. The WP-CLI documentation calls this out specifically and it is easy to miss:

wp cache flush

For a full reset, including users and settings, drop the database and reinstall:

wp db reset --yes
wp core install --url=example.com --title="Site Title" \
  --admin_user=admin [email protected]

That is a harder reset than the plugin performs, because it removes every user account including yours, which is why core install creates a new one in the same breath.

3. By hand, which is the last resort

Only when you have neither dashboard access nor SSH. It is the most error-prone route and the only one with no undo.

1. Open phpMyAdmin from your hosting panel and export the database, as a second copy alongside your backup.
2. Drop the database, then create a new empty one with the same name, user and permissions.
3. Over FTP, delete everything except wp-config.php, which holds your database credentials and saves you re-entering them.
4. Upload a fresh copy of WordPress from wordpress.org, minus its own wp-config.php.
5. Visit yoursite.com/wp-admin/install.php and complete the installation.

Step two is the one that catches people. Creating the new database with a different name or user means editing wp-config.php to match, and getting that wrong produces "error establishing a database connection" with nothing else to go on.

What each method deletes, and what survives

The question nobody answers, and the reason people reset twice.

* wp site empty keeps your media unless you add the --uploads flag, which deletes it too.

Two things fall out of that table which are worth saying plainly.

None of these methods deletes your files by default. A reset empties the database. Every plugin and theme is still sitting in wp-content, which is why a reset is not a way to clean up a hacked site.

If you only want the content gone, wp site empty is the right tool, and it is the one nobody recommends. It keeps your settings, your users and your working plugin setup, which for a site being repurposed rather than abandoned is exactly the outcome.

After the reset

Five things, and the third is the one that quietly costs traffic.

1. Set your permalinks back, under Settings then Permalinks, before you publish anything. Changing them later changes every URL you have created in the meantime.
2. Reinstall your theme and plugins, and reapply licence keys from the list you made. Install what you need rather than what you had.
3. Check Settings, then Reading, and make sure "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" is unticked. It is easy to tick while rebuilding and very easy to forget, and a site can sit unindexed for weeks before anyone notices.
4. Confirm HTTPS, the site title and the timezone. A fresh install does not inherit them, and a wrong timezone makes scheduled posts publish at the wrong hour.
5. Resubmit your sitemap in Search Console once there is content to crawl again.

Then load the site logged out, in a private window. What you see logged in is not what a visitor sees, and this catches maintenance mode left switched on more often than anything else.

Resetting one part instead of the whole site

A surprising number of people reset an entire WordPress site because one thing is misconfigured beyond the point they can unpick it. Almost every part of WordPress can be reset on its own, and none of these touches your content.

Reset your permalinks

If URLs are returning 404 errors everywhere except the home page, the rewrite rules have come loose rather than the pages having gone. Go to Settings, then Permalinks, and click Save Changes without changing anything. That regenerates the rules and fixes it more often than it has any right to. Over SSH it is wp rewrite flush.

Reset a single plugin's settings

Most well built plugins have a reset or restore defaults button in their own settings screen, usually under an Advanced or Tools tab. That is a far smaller hammer than resetting WordPress, and it keeps everything else exactly as it is.

If a plugin has no such option, deactivating and deleting it, then installing it fresh, usually clears its settings. Usually, not always: many plugins deliberately leave their database rows behind so your configuration survives an upgrade, which is helpful right up until the moment you want it gone.

Reset your theme customisations

On a block theme, open Appearance, then Editor, find the template or template part you have changed, and choose Reset or Clear customisations from its options menu. That drops your version and restores the theme's original, one piece at a time.

On a classic theme the equivalent lives in the Customiser, though many themes do not offer one. Switching to another theme and back clears most theme modifications, which is crude and effective.

Reset a password or a user

Losing access is not a reason to reset a WordPress site, though people do it. There are four ways back into an account that do not involve deleting anything, covered in our guide to resetting a lost WordPress password.

Clear out the clutter without a full reset

If the actual problem is years of accumulated junk, target it directly. Delete deactivated plugins and unused themes rather than leaving them on disk, since an abandoned plugin sitting inactive is still a file on your server and still a security surface. Empty the trash for posts and comments. Remove post revisions, which on an old site can outnumber the posts several times over.

That gets most of the benefit people expect from a WordPress reset, without losing a single thing you meant to keep.

What a reset will not fix

Resetting is a blunt instrument, and it is genuinely the wrong tool for several of the problems people reach for it with.

It will not remove malware. This is the important one. A reset empties the database and leaves every file in place, so a backdoor in a plugin folder, in your uploads directory, or anywhere outside wp-content survives untouched. You will rebuild the site and be reinfected. Our guide to running a security audit covers finding the actual problem, and a genuinely compromised site needs a proper clean-up rather than a reset.

It will not fix a hosting problem. If the site is slow because the server is oversubscribed, or breaking because PHP is out of date, the fresh install runs on exactly the same server and behaves exactly the same way.

It will not fix a theme you are going to reinstall. If a bloated theme is the reason the site is slow, resetting and putting the same theme back changes nothing.

It does not clean your backups. If the problem has been there for months, your restore points contain it too, which is worth knowing before you reach for one.

When not to reset at all

Three situations where the answer is something else.

When you have not diagnosed the problem. Resetting to fix an unknown fault is guessing with your content as the stake. Turn on the error log and find out what is actually failing first.

When one thing is broken. A single failing plugin is a plugin problem. Deactivating it takes ten seconds and costs you nothing.

When the site is live and earning. An online shop mid-trading is not a candidate for a reset. Build the replacement on staging, check it properly, and switch over when it is ready.

WooCommerce deserves naming here, because the risk is larger than it looks. Orders, customers, subscriptions, coupons and tax settings all live in the database, so a reset takes the lot. Order history is not just content, it is your accounting record, and businesses are required to keep those for years rather than months. Check what your accountant needs before you delete anything, export orders and customers to CSV from WooCommerce's own tools, and store that somewhere outside the site.

Multisite is the other one. A reset plugin on a network can behave in ways it does not on a single site, and dropping a shared database takes down every site on the network rather than the one you were thinking about. Work on a clone first.

Resetting is the right call for a genuinely fresh start: a site being repurposed, an abandoned project, a test install, or a rebrand where none of the old content is coming with you. Outside that, something smaller is usually the answer.

The short version

Decide which word you meant. If the site is broken, restart it: clear the caches, restart PHP, cycle the plugins, try a default theme, reinstall core. Nothing in that list deletes anything, and it resolves the large majority of cases.

If you genuinely want a fresh start, back up and test the backup, export what you are keeping, write down your licence keys and permalinks, and then use wp site empty if you want the content gone but the setup intact, or a reset plugin if you want the lot.

And whichever you did, check that search engine visibility box afterwards.

Frequently asked questions