[Digital Jedi]

Originally Posted by Trip

Fantastic! Great, well written article. A lot of people will find this most useful.
Thank you for taking the time to put it together.
I do have one question though...it's concerning the removal of a mod that made changes to the database. Some authors include a executable removal file. However, some do not. In most cases is it ok or common practice to un-install the product, remove the files and leave the db as is?

These days, I believe most modifications will undo any database changes upon uninstall, and the ones that don't will explicitly tell you what database tables to drop after you uninstall them. Living Avatars , for example, gives you step by step directions on what to remove and how to remove them.

But in the event the explanations are not that explicit, your best bet is to check with the developer or other people in the modification thread. In most cases, the tables will probably be sitting there doing nothing and doing no harm and dropping them is as simple as logging into phpMyAdmin and removing them. But since databases are extremely delicate, you should make absolutely sure of what your doing before you do it. And that means checking within the modification thread as thoroughly as possible, and doing your research before proceeding.