It is common when improving your Magento store that you will install new Magento extensions and sometimes you will need to troubleshoot an issue. The best way to do this is to disable extensions and see if they contribute to a particular issue. If you disable an extension and the issue disappears, then it could be the extension contributes to the issue.
How NOT to disable a Magento extension
There are many resources online that will tell you to go to System -> Configuration -> Advanced in order to disable a Magento extension. This will NOT disable the extensions! The only thing this can do is disable the extensions output. The extension will still be running in the background and could be causing issues with your store. In fact, disabling its output could cause even more issues.
How to disable a Magento extension the right way
To disable it correctly is quite simple. Just follow these simple steps:
- Go to System -> Cache Management in your backend
- Select all caches and set their status to disabled. This ensures that when you disable an extension the cache will not interfere and if you need to re-enable it quickly you will be able to do it.
- Open the extensions xml file in [Magento root]/app/etc/modules and you will see xml in the file like the following:
1<active>true</active>
Change the true to false and it should be disabled.
The really easy way to disable a Magento extension
Are you the proud user of an Extendware Magento extension? Then we provide you a very easy way to disable extensions in your store that will handle the cache, dependencies, and more when disabling. All you need to do is go to Extendware -> Manage Extensions -> Overview, find the extension and click it, and on the next page change its Status to Disabled and save.
