Manually Uninstall W3 Total Cache Plugin

W3 Total Cache is one of the leading plugin for WordPress cache system. Everyone loves until it’s working (no doubt..!). However, occasionally it may cause for tragedy like to continuous ‘Fatal error’ notification in an admin panel for limited memory allocation, scattered view of the front end, blank plugins page. This disaster might make you to remove this plugin completely. Even though, you can solve this tragedy by allowing more memory via php.ini or wp-config.php or .htaccess, but many times it fails to produce fruitful results.

To regain access to an admin panel, without hampering the functioning of the website, follow the below steps. For these, you should have to access FTP client (like FileZilla) or cPanel.

Steps to follow when WordPress admin panel working perfectly

1. First disable all setting by click on Performance > General Settings > Toggle all caching type on or off (at once). Ensure that all caching elements have been unchecked properly.
2. Ensure that the files wp-config.php and .htaccess have file permission level as 644. If not then change it.
   
3. Deactivate and Delete the W3 Total Cache Plugin

Steps for non-working WordPress admin panel users. Also next step for Working admin panel users.

1. Edit wp-config.php and find the line define(‘WP_CACHE’, true). Now make it define(‘WP_CACHE’, false).
2. Delete w3-total-cache directory from wp-content/plugins
3. Now delete below three files from  wp-content
   1. advanced-cache.php
   2. db.php
   3. object-cache.php
4. Also, delete two directories from same wp-content
   1. cache
   2. w3tc
5. Backup your .htaccess file from the root folder and remove the content inside
   1. # BEGIN W3TC Browser Cache TO # END W3TC Browser Cache
   2. # BEGIN W3TC Page Cache core TO # END W3TC Page Cache core
   3. # BEGIN W3TC Skip 404 error handling by WordPress for static files TO # END W3TC Skip 404 error handling by WordPress for static files
6. Done..!

Now refresh the admin panel. That’s it. You will regain access to your upstanding previous view without any W3 Total Cache residue.