In another blog post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use these to easily enhance your web site’s functionality.

To view this article, go here:

• Adding New Features And Functionality To Your Website With Plugins

In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping WordPress plugins up-to-date, how to automatically update and uninstall plugins, and practical plugin management tools if you plan to run multiple WordPress sites or blogs.

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

Why Many Of Your WordPress Plugins Need Frequent Upgrading

The WordPress software is regularly updated (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in earlier software releases, and to improve existing features or introduce new ones.

Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, you can expect to see at least some new new update notices for WordPress plugins each time a new version of WordPress is released.

The reason for this, is because most WordPress plugins are created by third-party developers, so sometimes 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 issues to sometimes occur.

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

Keeping your plugins regularly updated and removing old plugins you no longer need is part of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid errors or problems.

The step-by-step tutorial below explains how to upgrade and delete WordPress plugins safely inside the dashboard with no web coding knowledge or skills required.

Updating And Deleting Plugins From Your WordPress Admin Dashboard – Step-By-Step Tutorial

WordPress employs several methods of letting users know when plugins need to be updated.

For example, you can see how many plugins are out-of-date as soon as you log into your WordPress Dashboard simply by looking at the “Plugins” menu.

For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that 9 WordPress plugins are out of date and need to be updated …

You can also see how many plugins need updating from your WP Admin Toolbar (the screenshot below shows that 9 plugins should be brought up to date) …

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 download pages and gives you the option to update your plugin individually or in bulk …

Let’s start by showing you how to update individual WP plugins.

Upgrade WordPress Plugins One At A Time

We recommend performing a complete backup of your site files and database before upgrading your website or blog.

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

The “Plugins” screen will display in your browser. This page can be quite long depending on the number of plugins you have installed in your blog …

(WordPress Plugins Section)

Notes:

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 page and type in a smaller number of items per page (by default, all plugins display on the screen), then click the ‘Apply’ button …

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

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 in need of upgrading have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Insert Plugin Name] available” …

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

WordPress provides streamlined plugin updates, so that updating your plugins happens with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins area …

Repeat the above process for all plugins on your site that need updating, or refer to the section below if you have a number of plugins that are out-of-date and would like to upgrade them all at once.

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

Bulk-Updating WP Plugins

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

Click on 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 its box …

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

And then 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 go back to the Plugins screen, or choose another option from the main menu …

Once all plugins are up-to-date, the update reminders 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) …

You have updated all plugins on your site to their latest version!

(When your site or blog uses the latest version of all plugins, update alerts disappear)

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

How To Safely Delete Plugins

It’s a good idea to uninstall plugins that you no longer use. This can conserve resources on your server and also helps to eliminate problems.

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

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 delete a plugin, go to your main menu and click on Plugins > Installed Plugins …

In the Plugins page, locate the plugin you want to delete 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 …

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

Click 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 remove will be listed on your screen …

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

The selected plugin(s) will be deleted from your server …

Deleting Several Plugins At Once

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

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

Once you have done this, select Deactivate from the Bulk Actions dropdown 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” screen 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 checkbox, 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, choose Delete from the Bulk Actions drop 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 absolutely certain that you want to go ahead and delete all of the plugins listed …

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

Useful Management Tools For Plugins

In addition to the methods shown above, you can install a number of tools to 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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