The W3 Total Cache plugin is the gold standard caching plugin for WordPress. To do its job it is highly integrated into WordPress. Unfortunately, because of these issues, typical methods to disable and uninstall occasionally fail. When this occurs, the site often crashes hard. Often the only way to get the site up and running again is to manually uninstall the plugin.
Most WordPress users have a love-hate relationship with the W3TC plugin. When it is running correctly, the performance improvements are almost magic. However, installation and uninstallation issues continue to plague each version.
Often when trying to update or disable the plugin, WordPress will either crash or errors will bring the server down to a crawl. The only way to regain control of the situation is through manual uninstallation of the plugin.
You will need either FTP or SSH access to accomplish these steps.
1. Edit wp-config.php and remove the line:
define('WP_CACHE', true);
2. Navigate to wp-content/plugins and delete the w3-total-cache directory.
3. Back out to the main wp-content directory.
4. Delete object-cache.php.
5. Delete advanced-cache.php.
6. Delete db.php.
7. Backup your .htaccess file from the root directory of your website and then delete the original .htaccess file.
8. Build a fresh .htaccess file through the wp admin through the Permalink option in Settings. When you click the Save Changes button under Permalinks, the rewrite rules needed by WordPress will be recreated in a fresh .htaccess file.
9. You can remove the cached files by deleting all the files and directories in the w3tc directory under wp-content.
