How to remove a local site without deleting your files

Removing a site from Server by Zaweba never deletes your files. Use Remove on the site's card in the sites list, and Server takes the site off its list while always keeping the site's folder. It also offers to delete the site's database, which you can accept or decline.

People hesitate to tidy up a local server because they're not sure what a delete will take with it. Server's rule is simple and worth remembering: your folder stays, and the database only goes if you say so.

What Remove does

Every site is a card in the sites list showing its addresses, its folder and its database, with buttons for Open in browser, Open folder, Database and Remove. Choosing Remove stops Server from serving that site. The name.test and name.localhost addresses no longer lead anywhere.

The folder itself is never touched, whether it's one the wizard made in Server's www folder or a project folder of your own that you pointed the site at. Your PHP files, images and anything else in it are exactly where they were.

Deciding about the database

If the site has a database, Server offers to delete it at the same time. Think before you accept. A database often holds content you can't easily recreate: posts, users, settings and test data built up over weeks.

If there's any doubt, keep it. Or take a copy first with Export SQL on the Databases page, which writes a full dump including routines and triggers. A dump is one file, easily kept beside the site's folder in an archive, and it can be loaded back with Import SQL any time.

Deleting a database is deliberately careful. Server asks for confirmation, uses a red button, and makes Enter mean Cancel, so a quick press of Enter can't wipe anything by accident.

Tidying the hosts file

A site's name.test address depends on a line in the Windows hosts file, which Server keeps in its own marked block. After removing sites, Tools, then Update hosts (or the Update the hosts file button) applies the changes and tidies out lines for sites that are gone. It shows one Windows prompt, because the hosts file needs administrator rights, and it only ever replaces its own block. If you've been using name.localhost addresses, there's nothing in the hosts file to tidy.

Bringing a site back later

Since the folder is still there, getting the site back is quick. Run the new-site wizard, give it a name and choose the existing folder instead of making a new one. Pick the PHP version, and switch HTTPS on again if the site had it. If you kept the database, connect to it as before. If you exported it, make a new database and import the dump.

This also makes Remove a handy way to rename a site: remove it, then add it again from the same folder with the new name.

Clearing out files as well

If you really do want the files gone, delete the folder yourself in File Explorer once the site is removed. The Open folder button on the site card, used before you remove it, takes you straight there. Doing it in two steps means it's always your decision, never a side effect.

Keeping the sites list short makes the control panel and dashboard easier to read, and with Server by Zaweba there's nothing to lose by tidying.