Residue remains after plugin is removed
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Is there any plugin available that will remove all parts of an installed plugin?
The reason I ask is that I’ve noticed more than once that after removing a plugin for some reason parts are still hiding somewhere on the system. The reason I notice this is that when you go back in and re-install the plugin a lot of the data is still there even though you did a complete delete. I don’t know why this is, I would think the authors of the plugin would also make sure all the data files were removed as well, but there not. This could cause a problem with installing a new plugin as causing some files to go in size as well.
Is there such a plugin ?? If not wouldn’t it a good idea to create one that would do a cleanup job ??
Any insight on this would be helpful…thank you
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Plugin data removal is really at the discretion of the plugin developers. Some remove data automatically when removed or deactivated, some have manual removal methods, some don’t have any method of removal.
However, any lingering data is stored in the database and won’t cause any increase in page file size, maybe some slight disk space usage. At worst it will increase query times on the tables where it stores the data, and it would take a large amount of data to have a noticeable impact.
Plugins also store data with unique identifiers, and most go out of their way to ensure there won’t be any conflict with other plugin data, usually with a unique prefix on the storage keys. In the unlikely event you do notice conflicts with plugin data, I would notify both parties to resolve the issue. And because each plugin data storage is unique it is virtually impossible to have a universal cleanup method; doing so would require cataloging and tracking each piece of data plugins store and how they store it.
I really wouldn’t be concerned with the leftover data, but if you are, I would contact the developers of the plugins in question about how to purge the data.
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