In another article, we explain what plugins are and how you can use plugins to easily enhance your web site’s capabilities.

You can view this article here:

• Adding New Functionality To Your Web Site With WordPress Plugins

In this tutorial you will learn why WordPress plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to safely upgrade and delete plugins, and useful plugin management tools.

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

Why Your Plugins Need To Be Upgraded

WordPress regularly updates its software (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in earlier software releases, as well as to improve existing features or introduce new functionality to WordPress users.

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

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

Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are fairly 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 need to do on your end, is keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is very simple and easy to do.

Keeping your WordPress plugins up-to-date and removing old plugins you no longer use is part of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid any conflicts or errors.

The step-by-step tutorial below explains how to upgrade and delete plugins from your WordPress admin dashboard without editing web code.

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins In WordPress – Tutorial

WordPress uses a number of different methods of letting users know when plugins on their blog need to be updated.

For example, you can immediately see how many plugins are out-of-date from your WP Dashboard just by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.

For example, in the screenshot below, 9 plugins have older versions that need updating …

You can also view how many plugins need to be updated from your WordPress Admin Toolbar (as shown below, several plugins should be brought up to date) …

The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you how many plugins need to be updated …

In addition to providing information about which plugins have updates available, the Plugins page provides links to the plugin developer pages and gives you the option to update the plugin instantly …

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

Update WordPress Plugins One At A Time

We recommend making a full backup of your website before upgrading your blog or website.

From your main menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …

The “Plugins” area will display in your browser. The list of plugins can run down your page for a while, depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site …

(Plugins Page)

Useful Info:

If you have too many plugins and would like to reduce the number of plugins displayed on the screen, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins area and type in a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show on the screen by default, i.e. “999”), then click the ‘Apply’ button …

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

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

Plugins that need upgrading display the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin Name] available” …

Locate the plugin that needs to be updated and click on the update now link …

WordPress has done away with the loading screen when updating plugins and streamlined the process, so that the process of updating your plugins takes place with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins screen …

Repeat the above process for any other plugins on your site that need to be updated, or see the section below if you have many plugins that are out-of-date and would like to update all plugins in one simple operation.

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Now that you know how to upgrade one plugin at a time, it’s time to learn how to bulk-update plugins.

Bulk-Upgrading WordPress Plugins

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

Tick the checkbox in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to update by checking their individual boxes …

In the Bulk Actions dropdown menu above your plugin list, select Update …

And then click Apply …

The plugins you have selected will automatically begin to update …

After all upgrades are done, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to your Plugins screen, or visit a different section of your dashboard …

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

All plugins have now been updated!

(When your site or blog uses the latest version of all plugins, the notification icons do not display)

Now that you know how to automatically upgrade your plugins, let’s take a look at how to safely remove plugins from your site.

Deleting Plugins

At times, you may choose to delete WP plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This helps to decrease server resources and will help you avoid causes of some problems.

In this section, we show you how to uninstall unused plugins from your WordPress site or blog.

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

To remove a plugin, go to your admin menu and click on Plugins > Installed Plugins …

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

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

If the plugin is active, click on Deactivate before continuing with your plugin deletion …

Click on Delete …

If you need to have a look at all the files that will be deleted before proceeding, then click on the “Click to view entire list of files which will be deleted” link in the “Delete Plugin” section …

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

If you are sure that you would like to proceed and delete the plugin files, click on the Yes, Delete these files button …

Your plugin(s) will be deleted from your WordPress installation …

Deleting Several WP Plugins In Bulk

You can delete all inactive plugins at once, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be removed.

Note: To delete any plugins that are currently active, you must first 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) …

Next, specify Deactivate from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …

Click Apply …

The selected plugins will be deactivated …

To delete all or some of the inactive plugins, go to the “Plugins” page and click on the Inactive link on the main menu …

Click on the check box in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to delete by checking their individual boxes …

Once you have selected all of the plugins that you want to delete, specify Delete from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …

Click the Apply button …

A list of all selected plugins will show up in the Delete Plugins screen. 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 sure that you would like to proceed to the next step and delete all of the plugins listed …

Your selected plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …

WordPress Tools For Managing WordPress Plugins

In addition to the methods shown above, you can use other WordPress plugins to manage your plugins.

Health Check & troubleshooting

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

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.

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.

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.

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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