Remove WordPress Multisite data
July 31st, 2010 | Tagged as: WordPress | Download as PDF
Lots of articles are written across the web about how one can use WordPress Multisite capabilities to power several blogs from one installation. This feature comes from WPMU being merged into WP. Recently I was working with a client, which was stucked in between of the process of setting up and wanted me to complete it.
Removing WordPress Multisite data was a new subject and Google search gave nothing useful, so I am sharing on how you can remove WordPress Multisite data completely incase you don’t want it or you want to re-install with a fresh state or whatever.
Before proceeding make sure you take a backup of the database so you can restore it if something goes wrong. And if you don’t feel comfortable or don’t really know what you are doing, then you shouldn’t be doing it. Get a developer to do this for you.
- Remove all the lines added to wp-config.php
- Revert back to older .htaccess file or delete it and regenrate it by going to Settings > Permalinks
- Remove the two fields added to the users table that are multisite-only (deleted and spam columns).
- Remove the following tables in database (prefixed by your DB prefix which is generally wp_):
- wp_blogs
- wp_blog_versions
- wp_registration_log
- wp_site
- wp_sitemeta
- wp_signups
- wp_sitecategories (if you have global terms enabled)
Now you have a clean WordPress install without any trace of Multisite data. Let me know if you have any questions 
Howdy! My name is Ashish K Saini aka Ashfame.
Thanks for doing this. It’s a dumb question – but I have to reinstall the multi-site and I don’t really understand where to find these tables! I’m going nuts here. Any help would be really appreciated.
ZB
You can use phpMyAdmin to do that
Thanks again. This was super helpful.
Glad that you found it useful
Thanks for this I had big issue with my main site thinking it was a multi site when trying to upgrade had problems it auto creating new db tables hope this fixes it.
Unfortunately, after deleting the .htaccess file I’m getting errors.
Fatal error: Call to undefined function wp() in /home/bookieb/public_html/stupidnothings.com/wp-blog-header.php on line 14
and
Fatal error: Call to undefined function get_option() in /home/bookieb/public_html/stupidnothings.com/wp-admin/admin.php on line 22
Hi Edwin,
These errors don’t seem to relate with .htaccess file
Did you regenerate the permalinks from Settings > Permalinks?
Thank you so much for this info! I broke a lot of stuff when I turned this on for my site, I couldn’t figure out how to get everything working in wordpress again until I found this!
Happy to help
Brilliant! Worked like a charm. Thanks for the tutorial!
Glad to help
You may also need to deal with images depending on the multi-site install.
If your .htaccess included
#RewriteRule ^(.*/)?files/(.*) wp-includes/ms-files.php?file=$2 [L]
Then change it to:
RewriteRule ^(.*/)?files/(.*) wp-content/uploads/$2 [L]
You will also need to copy over the files from the files dir to the usual content/uploads dir.
And change the upload dir setting in Media Settings in the admin panel.
I also had a problem that the blog’s tables were wp_1_xxx but the user table was wp_user.
Fix:
a) rename wp_user to wp_1_user
b) change db prefix in wp-config.php to be wp_1_
Its better to regenerate the .htaccess file then editing it. Not sure about the uploads setting (may be you are right), and your others steps are more of like keeping one of the blog as the primary blog and removing others, else you won’t need to do that. User tables are shared across a multisite install.
Great post, finally got rid of that WPMU install! Alot better than what you find on the wordpress.com forums
Haha thanks, I have never dealt with WPMU. Glad that the post helped you.
Thank You So Much I Have Been Trying To Find A Way To Go Back To A Regular WP Account For A While Now!
Thank You!! I have tried to find a way to do this for some time. I have found a lot of people are looking for this but only just today I found this site! Aloha to you!!
THANKS. I was very concerned on how to go back.
Thanks man!
Hi,
Please help. When I removed those tables I get this error when I access the website: Error establishing database connection.
thank you!
Fantastic, worked perfectly for me.
Thanks for the write-up; This kind of information should be on the official WP website, along with installing the network.
Thank you very much!
Well thanks…. Lost every bit of information in my blog following your instructions.
You do realize you did something wrong in following the instructions, right? This post was for developers and not end users. Do you have a recent backup to restore it? If not, ask your webhost if they have one.