It is advised to disable unused modules in Magento for website optimization. Also while troubleshooting issues we can temporarily disable module(s) to see which module(s) is/are causing the issues.

Let see how we can disable the modules in Magento:

1. Login to Magento admin and go to Admin >> System >> Configuration. On the left hand side click on the Advanced section under Advanced tab.

This will open the “Disable Modules Output” screen. Here you can select “Disable” from the dropdown for the module(s) you want to disable and save the configuartion. As the name says “Disable Modules Output”, disabling a module output just disables rendering of block output and not modules. The module configuration is loaded and all the controller, model, observer code is still being executed.

2. Using FTP or putty change current directory to {{Magento_Root}}/app/etc/modules folder.

Open the xml file of the module you want to disable, and look for the <active> module tag.

It will look as below:

<active>true</active>

Change it to

<active>false</active>

and save the file.

Do this for all the modules you want to disable.

If you disable modules this way, no module code is executed. Magento reads the module xml file to load it and seeing that its not active, it does not load the module configuration and so no module code gets executed.

3.  Using FTP or putty change directory to {{Magento_Root}}/app/etc/modules folder.

Create of sub-folder “disabled”.

Now move the xml files of the modules you want to disable to the “disabled” folder.

Magento reads xml files in {{Magento_Root}}/app/etc/modules to load the modules but it does not read any sub-folder files under it. So in this way Magento is not even aware of the modules under “disabled” folder.

This approach can be used while troubleshooting issues as you will not have to open files to set “<active>” tag to false.

NOTE: Remeber to flush the Magento cache after disabling the modules.