How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

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

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins SafelyIn another blog post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use plugins to easily extend your blog’s capabilities.

To view the article, go here:

In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping your plugins up-to-date, how to safely upgrade and delete plugins from your site, and discover some plugin management tools.

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

Why Your Plugins Need Updating

New WordPress versions are regularly released (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in earlier software versions, as well as to improve existing features or introduce new ones.

Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, you can expect to see at least some new updates for plugins whenever new versions of WordPress are announced.

This is because most WordPress plugins are created by external developers, so sometimes code in the newly-released WordPress version conflict with plugins that were built for a previous version. Whenever this happens, issues can sometimes occur.

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

Important

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 any errors or problems.

The tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins without web coding skills necessary.

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely From The Dashboard – Tutorial

WordPress provides a few methods to inform users when plugins need to be updated.

For example, you can see how many plugins are out-of-date from your Admin area just by looking at the “Plugins” menu.

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

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins

You can also check how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Toolbar (as shown below, several plugins require updating) …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely

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

Upgrading And Deleting WordPress Plugins Safely From Your Dashboard

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

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins From Your Dashboard

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

How To Upgrade Individual Plugins

Warning

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

In your main menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins

Updating And Deleting Plugins

You will be taken to the “Plugins” page. This page can be quite lengthy depending on the number of plugins you have added to your site …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins In Your WP Admin Dashboard

(The WordPress Plugins Page)

Tip

Additional Info:

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 on the screen by default), then click the ‘Apply’ button …

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely

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” box …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely

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

Upgrading And Deleting WordPress Plugins Safely

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

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely From Your WP Admin Dashboard

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

How To Upgrade And Delete WordPress Plugins In The Dashboard

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

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely In Your Dashboard

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

***

Now that you know how to upgrade plugins individually, the next step is to learn how to update several WordPress plugins simultaneously.

How To Update Many Plugins

To bulk-update WordPress 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 …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Inside The WP Dashboard

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

Updating And Deleting Plugins From Your WordPress Admin Dashboard

In the Bulk Actions dropdown menu at the top of the page, choose Update

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins In WordPress

Click Apply

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

Your selected plugins will all be updated at once …

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely From Your Dashboard

Once all plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to the Plugins section, or choose another option from the WP dashboard menu …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Inside The Dashboard

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

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely Inside The Dashboard

All plugins are now up-to-date!

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely In Your Dashboard

(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 WordPress inside your WP dashboard, it’s time to learn how to safely delete plugins from your site or blog.

Deleting Plugins

At times, you may decide to delete plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This decreases server resources and also help you avoid potential problems.

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

Warning

Always create 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 remove a plugin, go to your main menu and click on Plugins > Installed Plugins

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins From Your WP Admin Dashboard

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

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

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely

If the plugin is active, then click on Deactivate before going any further …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Safely In WordPress

Next, click Delete

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

If you want to review a list of all the files that will be deleted before taking the next step, then click on the “Click to view entire list of files which will be deleted” link in the “Delete Plugin” screen …

Updating And Deleting WordPress Plugins

All files associated with the plugin selected for deletionwill display on your screen …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins

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

Upgrading And Deleting WordPress Plugins Safely

Your plugin(s) will be deleted …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins In WordPress

How To Delete Multiple WordPress Plugins At Once

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

Important

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) …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Safely Inside Your Dashboard

Next, choose Deactivate from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …

How To Update And Delete Plugins Inside Your Dashboard

Click the Apply button …

How To Upgrade And Delete WordPress Plugins Safely From Your Dashboard

The selected plugins will be deactivated …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Safely Inside Your Dashboard

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

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely In WordPress

Click on the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to delete by checking their individual boxes …

Updating And Deleting WordPress Plugins In The Dashboard

Once you have ticked all the check boxes next to the plugins that you want deleted, choose Delete from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins In The Dashboard

Click Apply

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely In Your Dashboard

A list of all selected plugins will display 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 absolutely sure that you want to go ahead and remove all of the plugins listed …

How To Update And Delete Plugins From The Dashboard

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

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins

Managing WP Plugins – Useful Tools

As well as the methods shown above, you can install WordPress plugins to manage your 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.

***

"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