No, that wont work… If you delete a user, his posts will change to be from a guest user…

I would probably create the new user and use a db query to move the posts to the new user… but moving subscriptions, buddies, stuff like that is problematic… moving the user info, topics, posts, etc is pretty straight forward…

We do have an open ticket for better options on what to do with a users posts when deleting a user… just wont make it into 5.3 in next few weeks…

Thanks for the quick feedback, glad I asked before attempting!

Sounds like it may be easier to just change the Admin user name in the db. Any thoughts about that are also appreciated.

think so… there are multiple plugins that make it easy to do…

pushing to get 5.3 out in conjunction with WP 3.6 here in next few weeks… then we need to finish the mobile stuff… but this user deletion stuff is at the top of the next items list…

Mr Papa said
… but moving subscriptions, buddies, stuff like that is problematic…

One more quick related question, hopefully:

Will deleting a user remove their topic subscriptions?

I’m asking for a different reason now. We’ll be cleaning up our database soon, and I’m wondering if deleting a user will delete that user’s subscriptions. That would be ideal in this case. (If the user requests to be deleted, we don’t want them to continue receiving notifications.)

Anybody happen to know if the same goes for registered users subscribed to blog comments via the “Subscribe To Comments” plugin?

yes… if you properly remove a wp user, it will remove any sp subscriptions that user had…