Delete a blog as admin
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The option to delete a site/blog is available to administrators, but it looks like the site owner has to confirm the deletion through a link sent by email. The administrator does not receive any confirmation link.
Is this how it works on wordpress.com? Is there any way an administrator can delete a site if the site owner is not available to respond? -
Hi wiserontherun,
Nothing is off-limits for Administrators, including deleting the entire site. This is why WordPress.COM recommends having only one administrator per blog.
No confirmation link will be sent by email.
Please refer to the following support pages:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/user-roles/#administrator
<a href=”https://en.support.wordpress.com/delete-site/
https://en.support.wordpress.com/delete-site/
https://en.support.wordpress.com/delete-site/ “>https://en.support.wordpress.com/delete-site/Happy blogging !
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Only the owner should be able to delete a site & an email should be sent to the owner of the site to confirm the deletion – if it does not work that way the system is broken
The owner can transfer a site to another account and the new account becomes the new owner and can delete a site
Since site URL’s are not recycled at WordPress.COM a safer route is to set the site to Private – that keeps everyone out and preserves the URL
Or the original owner can login to the forum and request the site to be deleted by the staff
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I was honestly quite confused when I read this support page, because the email is never mentioned: https://en.support.wordpress.com/delete-site/
Or even when I read this sentence: “Nothing is off-limits for Administrators, including deleting the entire site. This is why we recommend having only one administrator per blog.” from this page: https://en.support.wordpress.com/user-roles/
I pushed the idea and deleted one of my sites. I never received any email during the process.
I asked one of my friends to delete another as an Administrator. No email either. -
@heliodore @auxclass
I tried a deletion on a test blog too and found that a deletion confirmation email is sent to the owner of the site to respond to. An administrator can only trigger the deletion process but cannot really complete it.The documentation makes it seem as if administrators can really delete a site/blog when the reality is that they cannot complete it without the site owner being available, having access to and checking emails. Can someone from the wordpress.com team either confirm this behavior is as per the design or update the documentation to reflect the design? One of these two is broken.
Also, since trusted users are the ones designated as administrators by the site creators, I don’t see why they should not be able to delete a site/blog, especially if the site owner is not available to confirm the deletion.
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I added the modlook tag to this thread to see if someone from WordPress.com staff can confirm.
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In spite of the “missing” info in the Delete Site Support doc (apparently Step 5 was removed when the Doc was updated to reflect the New Dash), this process is mentioned by bdukes (Staff) here https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/who-deleted-my-site?replies=19#post-2417913 and was reconfirmed to me by email by Kristen Z. (also Staff) a week ago.
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What @bdukes mentioned in the link to the thread @JenT provided is correct:
If you were the owner of example.com and I was an admin I couldn’t delete the site without you, the owner, needing to click the confirmation link.
I’ll look into seeing if we can add step 5 back into our support page to prevent further confusion in the future.
Thank you!
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Also, since trusted users are the ones designated as administrators by the site creators, I don’t see why they should not be able to delete a site/blog,
People mess up and add Admins and things go wrong or the new Admins get upset at the owner and trash the site – seen it happen several times in the forum – even an editor can delete all the content from a site, effectively trashing the site, and there is no built in protection against a rouge Admin or Editor
I vote for the fewer people that can delete a site the better – yes that can be an issue at times, but any Admin can set a site to Private and effectively delete a site or the ability of someone to read the site
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@justjennifer, thanks for pointing to the other thread and bringing clarity from an official perspective.
staff-doublebassd, please update the support page ASAP so that it’s clear.
@auxclass, I do see the point about rogue admins deleting sites if they could, but at the same time, there are use cases for admins being able to delete blogs when the site owner is not available. There could be clear instructions when making another person an admin that those people could do everything on the blog, including deleting the content and the blog.
Since several user roles are allowed to delete content, like you pointed out, I don’t see why deleting a site should be out of bounds, especially for admins. There could even be a period of time before the actual deletion is carried out.
I won’t argue further since differing opinions have been stated (and re-stated). :)
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One other thing that admins can do if they care about the site is to change the site privacy settings to Private. This effectively takes the site offline and out of public view without deleting the site entirely which also makes the site address unrecoverable.
So as the support document says only one administrator per site is recommended.
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staff-doublebassd Just a note that the support page does not yet seem to be updated indicating that the site owner (the person who created the site) would receive a confirmation mail that has to be acknowledged.
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Note: Although admins have the ability to submit a site for deletion, only the blog owner can verify and complete the process. The blog owner will receive an e-mail notification along with a confirmation link they can click on to complete the deletion.
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Just a note that the support page does not yet seem to be updated indicating that the site owner (the person who created the site) would receive a confirmation mail that has to be acknowledged.
Just to note that the user who created the site and blog owner isn’t always synonymous since ownership can be transferred. The original owner can lose their rights of deleting the site if they transfer ownership to another user.
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