In another article, we provide an overview of what WordPress plugins are about and how you can use these to easily expand your site’s functionality.

You can view the article here:

• WP Plugins Extend Your Website’s Features

In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping your plugins up-to-date, how to safely upgrade and remove plugins, and discover some plugin management tools if you manage multiple WordPress sites or blogs.

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

Why Many Plugins Need Regular Updating

WordPress constantly updates its software (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in older software releases, 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 WordPress 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 developed and tested with a previous version. Whenever this happens, issues can 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 required). All you have to do as a website owner, is just maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is very quick, simple and easy to do.

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

The WordPress step-by-step tutorial below explains how to upgrade and delete plugins in WordPress without coding skills or knowledge needed.

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Inside Your WordPress Admin Dashboard – Tutorial

WordPress employs several ways to let you know when plugins on your blog need updating.

For example, you can see ‘at a glance’ how many plugins need to be updated from your Administration area just by looking at the “Plugins” menu.

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

You can also view how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Admin Toolbar (the screenshot below shows that 9 plugins need updating) …

The Plugins page (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also provides information about plugins that need updating …

As well as providing information about plugins that have available updates, the Plugins page provides links to the plugin download sites and gives you the option to update the plugins instantly …

Let’s start by learning how to upgrade individual WordPress plugins.

How To Upgrade Individual WordPress Plugins

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

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

You will be taken to the “Plugins” area. The list of plugins can run down your page for a while, depending on how many plugins you have added to your site …

(Plugins Section)

Useful Tips:

If you have too many plugins installed and would like to reduce the number of plugins displaying on your page, 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 page by default, i.e. “999”), then click the ‘Apply’ button …

Your Plugins page 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” box …

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

Plugins that require upgrading have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin Name] available” …

Select 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 updating, or see the section below if you have many plugins that are out-of-date and would like to upgrade them all at the same time.

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Now that you know how to upgrade one plugin at a time, the next step is to learn how to bulk-update plugins.

How To Upgrade Various Plugins Simultaneously

To upgrade multiple WP plugins in one go 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 …

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 pull-down menu above the list of plugins, choose Update …

Click Apply …

Your selected plugins will begin to update automatically …

After all plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to your Plugins area, or go to another section of your dashboard …

Once your plugins are all up-to-date, any plugin alerts 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) …

All plugins are now up-to-date!

(When your site or blog uses the latest version of all plugins, update icons no longer appear)

Now that you know how to upgrade your in the WP dashboard, let’s take a look at how to uninstall plugins from your site or blog.

Deleting Plugins

It’s a good idea to delete plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This can help reduce resources on your server and also eliminate potential problems.

In this section, you will learn how to remove 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 reinstall your site.

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

In the Plugins area, locate the plugin you want to delete 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, then click on Deactivate before continuing with your plugin deletion …

Next, click Delete …

If you would like 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 …

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

If you are absolutely certain that you want to proceed and delete the plugin, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …

The selected plugins and related files will be deleted from your server …

How To Safely Delete Multiple WordPress Plugins At Once

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) …

Once you have done this, select Deactivate from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …

Click Apply …

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 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 checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select and delete all inactive plugins …

Once you have ticked all the checkboxes next to the plugins that you want deleted, select 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 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 sure that you want to proceed to the next step and remove all of the selected plugins …

The selected plugins will be deleted …

Tools For Managing WP Plugins

In addition to the methods shown above, you can install WordPress plugins 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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