How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

Learn how to update and delete WordPress plugins inside your WordPress dashboard…

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins From The WP Admin DashboardIn a previous blog post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use plugins to add new features to your blog without editing code.

To read the article, go here:

In this tutorial you will learn why WordPress plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins, and discover some tips to help you better manage your plugins.

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

Why Many Of Your WordPress Plugins Need To Be Upgraded

The WordPress software is constantly updated (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in older releases, as well as to improve existing features.

Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, there will typically be new new update notifications for plugins each time a new WordPress version is released.

The reason for this, is because most WordPress plugins are created by 3rd-party developers, so sometimes the code in the newly-released WordPress version conflict with plugins that were created and tested to work with a previous version. When this happens, there is a potential for conflicts to sometimes occur.

Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are very proactive when it comes to making sure that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if this is required). All you have to do on your end, is keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is very quick, simple and easy to do.

Info

Keeping your WordPress plugins regularly updated and deleting old plugins you no longer need is an essential aspect of good WordPress management and helps to avoid errors and conflicts.

The WordPress step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins in WordPress with no web programming knowledge required.

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins – Tutorial

WordPress provides several methods to alert users when plugins need to be updated.

For example, you can instantly see how many plugins need to be updated as soon as you log into your Admin area by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.

In the screenshot below, you can see that nine plugins are out of date and need to be updated …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins From The WordPress Dashboard

You can also view how many plugins need to be updated from your WordPress Toolbar (in the screenshot below, you can again see that nine plugins need updating) …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely In WordPress

The Plugins page (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you what plugins need updating …

How To Update And Delete Plugins In WordPress

As well as providing information about which plugins have available updates, the Plugins page provides links to the plugin developer pages and gives you the option to update the plugins individually or in bulk …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins In WordPress

Let’s start by learning how to update plugins one at a time.

How To Upgrade WordPress Plugins One At A Time

Warning

We strongly recommend performing a complete backup of your website before making any changes to your website.

From your dashboard menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins

Updating And Deleting Plugins

The “Plugins” area will display in your browser. The table of plugins can be quite long depending on how many plugins you have installed in your site …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins

(WordPress Plugins Screen)

Useful Tip

Tips:

If you have too many plugins and would like to make this section more manageable, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins area and enter a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show up on the page by default, i.e. “999”), then click the ‘Apply’ button …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins From The WordPress Admin Dashboard

Your Plugins page will now be made more manageable with a ’numbered pages’ feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Plugin Search” box …

Updating And Deleting Plugins

You will see plugin information in different backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (active vs. inactive and out-of-date vs up-to-date) …

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely

Plugins that need updating have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin Name] available”

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely In WordPress

Select the plugin that needs updating and click on the update now link …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely In Your WordPress Admin Dashboard

WordPress provides smooth & fast plugin updates, so that updating your plugins takes place with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins area …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely

Repeat the above process for all plugins on your site that need updating, or see the section below if you have many plugins that are out-of-date and would like to update them all at the same time.

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Now that you know how to update WordPress plugins individually, it’s time to learn how to upgrade many WordPress plugins simultaneously.

Bulk-Upgrading WP Plugins

To bulk-update WordPress plugins from your admin area, go to the “Plugins” page and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely From The WP Admin Dashboard

Tick the check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to upgrade by checking their individual boxes …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins From Your WordPress Dashboard

In the Bulk Actions pull-down menu above the plugin table, select Update

Updating And Deleting Plugins

And then click Apply

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Safely Inside The Dashboard

The plugins you have selected will begin to update automatically …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins In The WordPress Dashboard

Once the update process has been completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to your Plugins section, or choose another option from the dashboard menu …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete WordPress Plugins Safely In Your Dashboard

Once your plugins are all up-to-date, any plugin alerts disappear (i.e. the “at-a-glance” indicators and “There is a new version of XYZ plugin available” notices no longer display) …

How To Update And Delete Plugins In WordPress

You have updated all plugins on your site!

Upgrading And Deleting WordPress Plugins

(When your site uses the latest version of all plugins, the notification icons no longer appear)

Now that you know how to automatically update WP inside your admin dashboard, it’s time to learn how to safely delete plugins from your WordPress site or blog.

How To Safely Remove WordPress Plugins

It’s a good idea to uninstall inactive plugins. This can conserve server resources and also help to reduce causes of problems.

In this section, you will learn how to safely delete unused plugins from your WordPress site or blog.

Warning

We strongly recommend creating a full back up of your site before installing, upgrading or deleting plugins, in case something goes wrong and you need to recover data or restore your site.

To delete a plugin, go to your dashboard menu and choose Plugins > Installed Plugins

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins

In the Plugins area, find the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is inactive.

Hint: Inactive plugins have a different colored background than active plugins and display an “Activate” link below the plugin name …

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely

If the plugin is active, click on Deactivate before proceeding …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins In Your Dashboard

Click on Delete

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

If you need to review a list of all the files that will be deleted before proceeding any further, then click on the “Click to view entire list of files which will be deleted” link in the “Delete Plugin” page …

Updating And Deleting Plugins

The entire list of files belonging to the plugin that you are about to delete will be listed on your screen …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely

If you are absolutely sure about going ahead and deleting the plugin, click on the Yes, Delete these files button …

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely

Your plugin(s) will be deleted …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely In WordPress

How To Delete Multiple WP Plugins Simultaneously

You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins on your site, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be uninstalled.

Important

Note: To delete any plugins that are currently active, you first need to deactivate them.

Go to the “Plugins” section and select all of the active plugins that you want to delete by either placing a tick next to their check box, or selecting the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely

Next, choose Deactivate from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely

Click the Apply button …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely

Your selected plugins will be deactivated …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Inside Your Dashboard

Once you have deactivated your plugins, click on the Inactive link on the menu at the top of the page …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely

Click the check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to remove by checking its box …

Upgrading And Deleting WordPress Plugins Safely From The WordPress Dashboard

Once you have ticked all the checkboxes next to the plugins that you want deleted, specify Delete from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins From The Dashboard

Click Apply

How To Upgrade And Delete WordPress Plugins Safely

A list of all selected plugins will show up in the Delete Plugins area. Click on “click to view entire list of files which will be deleted” to review all the plugin files that you are about to delete, or click on the Yes, Delete these files button if you are absolutely sure that you would like to proceed to the next step and remove all of the plugins listed …

Updating And Deleting Plugins In WordPress

Your plugins will be deleted …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Inside The WordPress Dashboard

Plugin Management – WordPress Tools

As well as the methods shown above, you can use a range of tools to manage your WordPress plugins.

Health Check & troubleshooting

Health Check & Troubleshooting WordPress plugin
Health Check identifies common problems and helps you troubleshoot plugin and theme conflicts.

This plugin provides comprehensive checks for your WordPress installation to detect common configuration errors and known issues. It also enables plugins and themes to add their own custom checks.

The debug section allows you to easily gather information about your WordPress and server configuration, which can be shared with support representatives for themes, plugins, or on the official WordPress.org support forums.

The troubleshooting feature allows you to initiate a clean WordPress session, where all plugins are disabled and a default theme is used, but only for your user account until you choose to disable it or log out.

The Tools section offers the ability to check for file tampering in WordPress, test email-sending functionality, and verify plugin compatibility with future PHP version updates.

For more details, go here: Health Check And Troubleshooting

Managing WordPress Plugins On Multiple Sites

As discussed earlier, when plugin updates are released, the best practice is to update the plugin as soon as possible to its latest version.

What if you run multiple WordPress sites using the same plugin?

Typically, you would need to log in to every site individually and update the plugin manually from the site’s admin dashboard.

If you manage or plan to manage multiple sites, this process can become very time-consuming, especially as plugins get updated quite often.

If you manage multiple WordPress sites, you can install, update, and delete multiple plugins on all your sites automatically and simultaneously using WordPress site management tools, like the one below:

WPMU DEV’s The Hub

WPMU DEV's The Hub - Unlimited WordPress Site Management
WPMU DEV’s The Hub – Unlimited WordPress Site Management

The Hub lets you manage unlimited WordPress sites easily and effectively from one central command center.

The Updates section of The Hub shows you exactly what needs updating on each of your managed site(s), including plugins, themes, and core software updates.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Updates menu

The Hub’s Updates features display how many outdated components need updating on your site(s).

You can choose to either update all your plugins at once or update them individually with just a few clicks. Best of all, you don’t need to log into every site separately to perform your plugin updates.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Updates menu

Update everything at once or perform individual updates directly in The Hub with a few clicks.

This can be a real time-saver when managing multiple WordPress sites, especially when WordPress releases a new version and you have to update many plugins and themes to prevent potential issues from happening.

The Hub - Update notifications.
This feature can help you save a lot of time updating multiple WordPress sites, especially when WordPress releases a new version of its software.

You can read our comprehensive article on managing multiple sites effectively using the Hub or visit WPMU DEV to learn more and try The Hub for free.

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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now