Sometimes it will be necessary to delete an existing user from WordPress, e.g. when the site's development partner or employees of the organisation change. This can be done easily from WordPress Dashboard or from the command line with WP-CLI.
Warning!
When deleting WordPress users, it's important to note that when a user is deleted, the posts made by the user are also deleted. Remember to transfer all of the user's content to another user before deletion.
The correct ways of deleting a WordPress user while preserving the user's created content are presented below.
Deleting a User in WordPress Dashboard
1. Log in to the WordPress admin panel and navigate to Users > All Users and choose Delete for the chosen user.
2. After this you have to choose the other user which all the content will be attributed to:
3. Finally, you can press Confirm Deletion to finalize the process.
Don't see the tab in the Dashboard? Make sure you're logged in as an administrator level user.
Deleting a User with WP-CLI
Make an SSH connection to your site.
First run
wp user listto check the IDs of the user to be deleted and which you're going to assign their content to.Then run the following command:
wp user delete 123 --reassign=567
User Data and GDPR Regulations
The GDPR or General Data Privacy Regulation enables the website users to request their personal information deleted from the site registry. The site owner (registrar) has to delete all necessary information as extensively as possible when requested and one of the most relevant personal information in WordPress is the user and its metadata.
Please note that Seravo does not control or manage the users of the clients' website. The site owner is responsible for the validity of the user information as well as responsible of deleting the information when requested.