In a separate post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use these to increase your site’s functionality.

You can read this article here:

• Add New Functionality To Your Site With WordPress Plugins

In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping your plugins up-to-date, how to automatically upgrade and uninstall your WordPress plugins, and some great tips to help you better manage your plugins if you need to own or manage multiple WordPress sites.

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

Why Many Of Your Plugins Need To Be Upgraded

New WordPress versions are constantly being released (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in earlier software versions, and to improve existing features.

Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, you can expect to see at least some new new update notices for plugins when new versions of WordPress are released.

The reason for this, is because most plugins for WordPress are created by third-party developers, so sometimes features in the newly-released WordPress version conflict with plugins that were built for a previous version. Whenever this happens, there is a potential for issues to sometimes develop.

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 just maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is really simple to do.

Keeping your 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 and errors.

The step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins safely without touching web code.

How To Automatically Update And Delete WordPress Plugins – Tutorial

WordPress provides a number of different methods of letting you know when your plugins need updating.

For example, you can instantly see how many plugins are out-of-date as soon as you log into your WP Dashboard just by looking at the “Plugins” menu.

In the screenshot below, you can see that nine WP plugins are out of date and need to be updated …

You can also see how many plugins need to be updated from your WordPress Toolbar (the example below shows that several plugins require updating) …

The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you which plugins need updating …

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

Let’s start by showing you how to upgrade WP plugins individually.

Upgrade WordPress Plugins Individually

We recommend performing a complete backup of your data and files before updating your website or blog.

In your WP admin menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …

You will be taken to the “Plugins” page. The table of plugins can go down your page for a while, depending on the number of plugins you have added to your blog …

(The WordPress Plugins Screen)

Useful Tips:

If you have too many plugins installed and would like to reduce the number of plugins showing on the screen, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins area and enter a smaller number of items per page (by default, all plugins display on the screen), then click Apply …

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 “Search” box …

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

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

Find 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 process, so that updating your plugins takes place “behind the scenes” 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 several plugins that are out-of-date and would like to upgrade all plugins in bulk.

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Now that you know how to update one WP plugin at a time, let’s show you how to bulk-update plugins.

How To Update Various WordPress Plugins

To bulk-update WP plugins using the automatic update 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 update by checking its box …

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

And then click Apply …

The plugins you have selected will begin the update process …

After your plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to the Plugins section, or select another option from the admin menu …

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” messages no longer display) …

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 notices no longer display)

Now that you know how to upgrade your plugins, let’s take a look at how to uninstall plugins safely from your blog or website.

How To Remove Plugins

It’s a good idea to delete plugins that you no longer require. This helps to reduce resource usage and eliminate problems.

In this section, you will learn how to safely uninstall unused plugins from your blog or 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 restore your site.

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

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

Hint: Inactive plugins use 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 …

Once you have deactivated the plugin, click Delete …

If you want 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” section …

All files associated with the plugin that you are about to remove will be listed on your screen …

If you are certain that you would like to go ahead and delete the plugin files, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …

The selected plugin(s) will be deleted …

How To Safely Delete Multiple Plugins Simultaneously

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

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

Next, specify Deactivate from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …

Click Apply …

The selected plugins will be deactivated …

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

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

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 display 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 sure that you would like to go ahead and remove all of the plugins listed …

All plugins will be deleted …

Managing Plugins

As well as the methods shown above, you can use 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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