When you first install WordPress (or any blogging console for that matter) through the fantastico / cPanel wizard, you get a warning in the end, not to delete the “fantastico_fileslist.txt” file because it includes information that will be used during the un-installation of the product. However, if for any reason you do delete that file, you should still be able to un-install the application with minimum fuss. First off, try un-installing through the cPanel>fantastico>wordpress console. It will probably fail but it will also tell you which files it didn’t manage to locate and advise you to delete them manually. Follow the steps below and you’ll be just fine:
1. locate the folder within which resides your wordpress installation. You should make sure that all wordpress related files are deleted. Delete every file and subfolder and finally delete the folder itself. If however, you installed on the server root (or in any case that you dont wish to mass-delete everything), make sure the following are deleted: a. 3 subfolders starting with wp- (ie. wordpress. ie.wp-admin, wp-content, wp-includes) b. the “fantastico_fileslist.txt” (if still present) and “xmlrpc.php” files and all files starting with wp- (ie. wp-app.php, wp-atom.php, wp-blog-header.php, wp-comments-post.php, wp-comments, wp-config-sample.php, wp-config.php, wp-cron.php, wp-feed.php, wp-links-opml.php, wp-load.php, wp-login.php, wp-mail.php, wp-pass.php, wp-rdf.php, wp-register.php, wp-rss.php, wp-rss2.php, wp-settings.php, wp-trackback.php).
2. locate and go into the .fantasticodata folder on your server root, locate the “installed_in_root.php” file, open it and remove the entry referring to your specific wordpress installation. The entry should look like this: <? $installed_in_root[“subdomainName.domainName.com”] = 1;?> . There may be a number of such entries in your file or just the one that you wish to erase. Be sure to leave the “<??>” markup intact and remove the “$installed_in_root[“subdomainName.domainName.com”] = 1;” entry.
3. locate the wordpress folder within the .fantasticodata folder and erase the “subdomainName.domainName.com|” COM file. Doing so, eliminates all file/folder evidence of a previous wordpress installation. We’re almost done then.
4. Next thing we need to do is to erase the SQL DB used by the wordpress installation and the user created in order to use the DB. So, log back into your cPanel console and locate the “username_wrdp’someNumber‘” database (or whichever other name your DB uses. the one I wrote is the default for my installation). The same name should appear under the Users list (it doesnt really matter if it differs). What you need to do now is (if you’re certain that this is the right DB and that you’re perfectly sure you want it gone), you should press the red “X” next to the User name in the Users column in order to erase that specific user from your installation. You will be prompted once for confirmation. After you have deleted the user, you should click the “Delete Database” link in the Actions column. Again, you will be prompted once before deletion and after you confirm, the last trace of your initial wordpress installation will be gone.
You can now just go back to fantastico and reinstall wordpress if you need to do so through the wizard.
