How to Unpublish a Website in WordPress

For those who use WordPress to publish their content, they may wonder how to unpublish a website. While it’s not hard (in fact, it’s incredibly easy), it is something that may not be obvious to those not well versed in using WordPress. In this article, we’ll discuss how to unpublish a WordPress site so that it can be reset to its original state. There are several reasons why you might want to do this (for example, when a blog post is featured on another site and you want to take it down or you want to allow guest blogging). But the most common reason is that you want to start over with a new domain or web address.

Why Should You Unpublish a Website in WordPress?

As we’ve discussed in previous articles, moving content from one place to another is a common occurrence in today’s digital world. As a result, many businesses are moving away from publishing directly on social media to more traditional offline mediums like newspapers and magazines. This means that those who rely on these platforms for income may be facing difficulty in keeping up with the demand for their content. In some instances, this may mean that good content is simply falling through the cracks.

Whether you decide to move all your content to a new domain or you want to keep a few posts but make the rest of the content private, removing old content is the first step to ensure that your new content can reach your audience.

How Do I Delete A Website in WordPress?

If you decide that you no longer want to keep your existing website, the first thing you should do is locate the option within WordPress. Hiding content is always a safe option, but if you use the right filters, you can ensure that your content is never actually deleted but just hidden. From there, you can simply click on the “Unpublish” link and take down the associated blog posts and/or pages. You can do this for any custom post types (including those for your products) that you’ve created.

Is There Any SEO Concerns If I Delete A Website in WordPress?

Any SEO (search engine optimization) expert worth their weight in organic search traffic will tell you that a securely closed site will get a major boost in rankings simply by it no longer being accessible to the public. For example, if you have a blog post that gets 10,000 views per month, and you decide to delete it because you no longer want to keep the content on your site, then Google will consider this to be a “negative signal” that the content was relevant and beneficial to consumers. In the short term, this may mean that your post drops in rankings.

Even if you decide to keep some of the content on your site but not all of it, you should still consider doing some SEO work to ensure that your site has the best possible rankings when a particular search term is entered. Otherwise, all of that hard work could be for naught.

How Do I Reset A Website In WordPress?

As we mentioned above, once you’ve deleted a website, you no longer have access to all of its content. In some instances, this may mean that you lose all of the links that were built up over time to the various posts and pages on your site. To get everything back to where it was before you started deleting, you’ll need to perform a “site recovery” in WordPress. While this is fairly easy to do, it is something that you should not attempt if you’re not tech-savvy or if you’re not comfortable taking the time to recover your site from wherever it may have been when the content was removed.

What Should I Take Into Consideration Before I Delete My Website?

As we mentioned above, once you’ve deleted a website, you no longer have access to all the content on it. In some instances, this may mean that you lose all of the links that were built up over time to the various posts and pages on your site. To get everything back to where it was before you started deleting, you’ll need to perform a “site recovery” in WordPress. While this is fairly easy to do, it is something that you should not attempt if you’re not tech-savvy or if you’re not comfortable taking the time to recover your site from wherever it may have been when the content was removed.

Can I Use A Third-Party Service To Unpublish A Website in WordPress?

If you decide that you no longer want to keep your existing website, the first thing you should do is locate the option within WordPress. If you use a third-party service, such as Bluehost, you can get support in case you run into any problems. Even better, they provide you with a free domain name and you can install WordPress in just a few minutes. Having a third-party service handle the technical side of things from installing WordPress to taking care of any necessary updates is a great way to keep things simple and save you time.