In another article, we provide a detailed explanation of what plugins are all about and how you can use plugins to enhance your site’s capabilities.

You can read this article here:

• WP Plugins – Enhancing Your Site’s Functionality

In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping plugins up-to-date, how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins, and discover some great plugin management tips.

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

Why Some Of Your Plugins Need To Be Regularly Upgraded

WordPress constantly updates its software (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in previous releases, and to improve existing features.

Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, there will typically be new new update notices for plugins every.

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

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

Keeping your plugins up-to-date and deleting old plugins you no longer need is an essential aspect of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid any potential errors and conflicts.

The WordPress step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins safely without requiring web coding skills or knowledge.

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins – Tutorial

WordPress provides several ways of letting you know when your plugins need to be updated.

For example, you can instantly see how many plugins need updating from your WP Dashboard by looking at the “Plugins” menu.

In the example below, 9 plugins need to be updated …

You can also check how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Admin Toolbar (the screenshot below shows that nine plugins should be updated) …

The Plugins page (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also notifies you about plugins that need to be updated …

As well as providing information about plugins that have available updates, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin developer pages and gives you the option to update your plugin with one-click …

Let’s start by learning how to update individual plugins.

Update Plugins Individually

Always make a backup of your site files and database before upgrading your website.

In your main menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …

The “Plugins” page will display in your browser. The table of plugins can go down your page for some length, depending on the number of plugins you have added to your blog …

(The WordPress Plugins Screen)

Useful Information:

If you have too many plugins installed and would like to make this section more manageable, 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 up on the page by default), then click the ‘Apply’ button …

Your Plugins section 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 “Search Plugins” function …

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

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

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

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

Repeat this process for any other plugins on your site that need to be updated, or refer to the section below if you have several 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 individual plugins, let’s show you how to bulk-upgrade plugins.

How To Update Multiple WordPress Plugins Simultaneously

To bulk-update plugins directly inside your dashboard, go to the “Plugins” section and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …

Tick the check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to update by checking its box …

In the Bulk Actions drop down menu above the table of plugins, select Update …

Click Apply …

The plugins you have selected will automatically begin updating …

Once all upgrades are done, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to the Plugins screen, or select another section of your dashboard …

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

You have updated all plugins on your site!

(When plugins on your site are up-to-date, the notification icons do not display)

Now that you know how to upgrade WP in the WP dashboard, let’s show you how to safely uninstall plugins from your site or blog.

How To Safely Delete WP Plugins

Occasionally, you may choose to delete plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This helps to reduce resources on your server and help to minimize problems.

In this section, we show you how to safely delete unused plugins from your site.

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 reinstall your site.

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

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

Hint: Inactive plugins use a different colored background than active plugins and display 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 browse 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” page …

A complete list of files associated with the plugin selected for removalwill be listed on your screen …

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

Your plugins and related files will be deleted …

How To Safely Delete Several Plugins Simultaneously

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

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 checkbox, or selecting the check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …

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

Click the Apply button …

Your selected plugins will be deactivated …

To delete all or some of the inactive plugins on your site, go to the “Plugins” section and click on the Inactive link in the Plugins menu …

Select all of the plugins you want to delete by either placing a tick next to their check box, or click on the check box next to the Plugin column header to select and delete all inactive plugins …

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

Click Apply …

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 certain that you would like to go ahead and remove all of the selected plugins …

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

Managing Plugins

As well as the methods shown above, you can use other WordPress plugins that let you manage your WordPress 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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