Unfortunately, some Plugins such as the WPML Translation Plugin (an extremely resource-demanding plugin with its own addons) make it quite difficult to uninstall them, as it is not done in the classic way (Disable / Remove) and let this possibility exist.

The correct way to remove these plugins varies from plugin to plugin.

The purpose for which additional actions are required to uninstall them is to remove any additional entries in your site's database, as well as any additional modifications to the settings.

WPML is one such plugin.

So if you encounter a problem on your site and wish to remove WPML, the procedure is as follows:

• Visit to "WPML > Support"
• Inside you will find in small print something about "troubleshooting page" which is a hyperlink. Tap on it
• Now to avoid looking for the "troubleshooting page" you can use the following link by putting your site address in front: /wp-admin/admin.php?page=sitepress-multilingual-cms%2Fmenu%2Ftroubleshooting.php
• On the page that opens, scroll down to the "Reset" tab and check the box "I am about to reset all translation and language data."
• Click on the button "Reset and deactivate WPML" and in the window that opens click OK
• WPML has been disabled and all its records have been deleted from the database.
• Immediately after that go to your site's installed plugins /wp-admin/plugins.php if it hasn't taken you there already.
• Find, disable and delete plugins that start with WPML, as well as WPML itself ("WPML Multilingual CMS")

Of course, if for any reason there are leftovers in the database, you can use the Phpmyadmin of your Cpanel or whatever panel you have, connect to your database and run the following (where "wp_" is the prefix of the table, maybe during the installation of wordpress you have declared another prefix, you will see it in the base this):

For the "wp_options" database table:

DELETE FROM wp_options WHERE option_name LIKE '%icl%';
DELETE FROM wp_options WHERE option_name LIKE '%wpml%';

For the "wp_usermeta" database table:

DELETE FROM wp_usermeta WHERE meta_key LIKE '%icl%';
DELETE FROM wp_usermeta WHERE meta_key LIKE '%wpml%';

Good luck, Nicolas 😉

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