In another post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use these to easily increase your website’s capabilities.

To read this article, go here:

• WP Plugins Extend Your Web Site’s Capabilities

In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping your WordPress plugins up-to-date, how to easily update and delete plugins from your site, and discover useful tips to help you better manage your plugins.

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

Why Some Of Your Plugins Need Updating

The WordPress software is constantly updated (about every 3-4 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 use on your site, there will typically be new new update notices for WordPress plugins each time a new version of WordPress is released.

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. When this happens, there is a potential for problems to sometimes develop.

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 updating is needed). All you need to do on your end, is keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is very simple to do.

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

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

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely Inside Your Dashboard – Step-By-Step Tutorial

WordPress provides a number of different ways to notify users when plugins need updating.

For example, you can immediately see how many plugins need updating inside your WordPress Dashboard simply by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.

For example, in the screenshot below, 9 plugins need updating …

You can also check how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Toolbar (in the example below, you can see how many plugins need updating) …

The Plugins section (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 download pages and gives you the option to update the plugin instantly …

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

How To Update Plugins Individually

Always make a backup of your website before upgrading your website or blog.

In your admin menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …

The “Plugins” area will display in your browser. This table of plugins can be quite lengthy depending on the number of plugins you have installed in your site …

(Plugins Page)

Notes:

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 enter a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show up on the screen by default), then click Apply …

Your Plugins section will now be reduced in size with a page scrolling feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search” feature …

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

Plugins in need of upgrading 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 provides smooth and simpler plugin updates, so that the process of updating your plugins takes place with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins area …

Repeat the above process for any other plugins on your site that need to be updated, or see the section below if you have several plugins that are out-of-date and would like to upgrade them all in bulk.

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

How To Bulk-Update Plugins

To bulk-update plugins simultaneously using the automatic updating feature, go to the “Plugins” screen and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …

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

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

Click Apply …

Your selected plugins will begin the update process …

Once all updates are completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to your Plugins area, or select another option from the dashboard menu …

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

All plugins have now been upgraded!

(When plugins on your site are all up-to-date, update notices do not display)

Now that you know how to automatically update plugins, let’s show you how to uninstall plugins from your WordPress blog or website.

Deleting Plugins

At times, you may want to remove WP plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This reduces resource usage and also helps to eliminate problems.

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

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 WP admin menu and click on Plugins > Installed Plugins …

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

Hint: Inactive plugins are listed in 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 proceeding …

Once you have deactivated the plugin, click Delete …

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” screen …

All files belonging to the plugin selected for deletionwill display on your screen …

If you are sure that you want to go ahead and delete the selected plugin files, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …

The selected plugin(s) will be deleted …

Deleting Multiple WordPress Plugins In Bulk

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

Note: To delete any plugins that are presently 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 check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …

Next, choose 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, go to the “Plugins” area and click on the Inactive link on the main menu …

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

Once you have selected all of the plugins that you want deleted, 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 go ahead and remove all of the selected plugins …

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

Management Tools For Plugins

As well as the methods shown above, you can install a number of 3rd-party tools 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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