Hi ;
I need to remove W3 Total Cache from my Wordpress e-commerce website, but look like is not something simple because some files never get delete in full. For now I deactivate the plugin. Someone got experience with this plugin ? Thank you.
Are you saying you cannot remove it from the dashboard?
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I am not familiar with that particular plugin, but in my experience far too many WordPress plugins do not provide “clean up”. It is up to a plugin author to delete orphaned table rows, unused files, etc. and sadly many plugin authors either don’t know how or don’t bother to write the code to do that. eg. some type of “deactivate, but keep associated spawn”, “pre-uninstall remove associated spawn”.
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It is possible to remove it from the dashboard, but I have read that there is files that can be very difficult to remove and produce problems with another plugins. Look like there is a specific way to remove this plugin.
Unless the left overs are causing a problem it’s likely better to just leave them be. I would not delete database tables / rows or files because they “looked” like unused left overs. If they were causing a demonstrable problem I would analyze the plugin code to see just what it did before I attempted to undo anything. This is often not an easy task. Everything that the code touches has to also be analyzed to avoid knock-on effects.
Although a WordPress site being bloated with cruft is annoying, doing something wrong and breaking the app can be much more of a problem to deal with than simply leaving the cruft.
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if you are not sure about what you are doing always make sure you have a backup that you can rely on. after removing any plugin always remember to delete the cache for changes to take effect
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It may take a bit of precautions (doing it first on the staging site), but deleting the plugin folder, any w3tc related & cache folder in wp-content, and possible other w3tc files there, plus any. httaccess rules it may have created and any w3tc database tables / w3tc wp-options table rows - that should do the trick.
If you want to be super thorough, purge transients (with serious caution, again), clean object cache, and flush rewrite rules / resave permalinks.
But this level of thoroughness you likely won’t need, and it does require some knowledge.
And not without risks.
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Yes, depending on the plugin, it can certainly require a lot of work to “migrate down”. It’s not a surprise many plugin authors don’t write the code to do it. That and I imagine most plugin authors are so into their work they never think that anyone would ever want to - gasp! - actually uninstall their plugin once they tried it.
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Problem is, some introduce so much db clutter that it affects performance
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Thank you so much !!! I will do like that , but what is the transients ?? I always clean it , but in reality I do not know what they are ? Thank you.
It would help if you have shell access so you can use WP Cli
off the power suply of pc,you will remove the cache right now
The OP is not asking about clearing his PC’s cache; he’s asking about removing a Wordpress plugin. 
Delete cache folder under w3. It will work.
Sorry for late response, but this is not about the pc, it is about a Wordpress plugin.
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