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We get it. It’s all very fun and exciting when you first get let loose on the multitude of themes which are available for WordPress websites. It seems as though there are themes that go on for days, with free, pro, and premium options all available, it is very easy to get carried away downloading and installing until you realise that you have more themes installed then you know what to do with.
The truth is, you only need two themes. The one which you are using, and a backup one which WordPress can read just in case your theme fails for whatever reason. There’s also the argument for child themes, but for the purpose of this post, I’m including a child theme as one of the themes which you are using.
The biggest reason for deleting unused themes is to speed up your website. When it comes to SEO and user retention, site speed is everything. Also, when it comes to backing up your website, more themes means more space required to backup your site. More space required means more time to backup your site. So deleting unused themes means that you have a quicker backup time for your site, and that you need less space for backing up your site in the first place. This is great if your hosting plan limits the sizes of your backups, or if you’re saving your backups to somewhere such as Google Drive or Dropbox and have limited storage associated with your account.
All in all, if you have themes sitting on your site which you aren’t using, you’re best of deleting them. Follow these five easy steps to delete your unused themes and to take advantage of freeing up that extra space!
Step 1
Firstly, to find your themes, hover over ‘Appearance’ in the side menu on your WordPress dashboard, and click ‘Themes.’
Step 2
You’ll then be able to see all of the themes which you currently have installed. On my page, you can see that I have Olsen installed and activated (this is the theme I use for my blog), Astra (my previous theme) and then three others which WordPress automatically installed for me. These are Twenty Nineteen, Twenty Twenty, and Twenty Twenty-One. These are great for backup options. What this means, is that if (for any reason) Olsen should fail me, my website will still work using one of the backup themes already assigned.
In my case, when I reset my website, the theme Twenty Twenty One automatically installed itself, meaning that as long as I had content on my site, I had a website which could still be visited.
Step 3
To delete a theme, hover your mouse over the theme you wish to delete and select ‘Theme Details.’
Step 4
A box will pop up with further explanation and information about the theme. In the bottom right hand corner, select ‘Delete.’
Step 5
Select ‘OK’ from the pop up box which appears, and hey presto! You’ve deleted your unwanted theme.
Repeat steps 3-5 for each theme which you want to delete.
This post was proofread using Grammarly.
