How To Update WordPress Plugins

Learn how to easily update all of your plugins inside your WordPress dashboard…

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

You can view the article here:

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

Why Some Of Your Plugins Need Regular Updating

New versions of WordPress are frequently being released (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in previous versions, as well as to improve existing features.

Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, there will typically be new new update notices for plugins whenever new versions of WordPress are released.

This is because most WordPress plugins are created by external developers, so sometimes the code in the new WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were created and tested to work with a previous version. When this happens, problems 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 needed). All you have to do on your end, is maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is very easy to do.

Useful Info

Keeping your 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 errors and problems.

The WordPress tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins from the WP dashboard without editing web code.

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely Inside The WordPress Admin Dashboard – Tutorial

WordPress uses a number of different methods to let users know when plugins on their blog need to be updated.

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

In the screenshot below, you can see that nine plugins have older versions that need updating …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely In The WordPress Admin Dashboard

You can also tell how many plugins need to be updated from your WordPress Toolbar (the screenshot below shows how many plugins require updating) …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins In WordPress

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

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Inside Your Dashboard

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

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins In The Dashboard

Let’s start by learning how to update individual plugins.

Upgrade WordPress Plugins Individually

Warning

We strongly recommend making a backup of your site files and database before making any changes to your website.

From your main menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely

The “Plugins” page will display in your browser. This page can be quite lengthy depending on how many plugins you have installed in your blog …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely Inside Your WP Dashboard

(Plugins Page)

Practical Tip

Useful Tips:

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

Upgrading And Deleting WordPress Plugins Safely In Your Dashboard

Your Plugins page will now be made more manageable with a pagination feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search Plugins” feature …

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

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

Updating And Deleting Plugins

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

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely Inside Your WordPress Dashboard

Locate the plugin that you want to update and click on the update now link …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely In WordPress

WordPress provides smooth and simpler plugin updates, so that the process of updating your plugins takes place “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins area …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins

Repeat this process for all plugins on your site that need updating, or refer to the section below if you have many 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 WordPress plugins one at a time, let’s show you how to bulk-update WP plugins.

How To Bulk-Update WordPress Plugins

To upgrade multiple plugins at the same time using the automatic update feature, go to the “Plugins” section and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

Click on the check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to update by checking their individual boxes …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins From The WP Admin Dashboard

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

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins In Your Dashboard

And then click Apply

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely In WordPress

The plugins you have selected will begin updating …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely In Your WordPress Admin Dashboard

After all plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to the Plugins area, or select another option from the dashboard menu …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely

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) …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete WordPress Plugins

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

Upgrading And Deleting WordPress Plugins

(When your plugins are up-to-date, the notification icons disappear)

Now that you know how to upgrade your plugins, it’s time to learn how to delete plugins from your WordPress site or blog.

How To Remove Plugins

Occasionally, you may want to remove plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This helps to conserve resource usage and help to reduce potential problems.

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

Warning

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 remove a plugin, go to your dashboard menu and choose Plugins > Installed Plugins

How To Automatically Update And Delete WordPress Plugins Safely

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

Hint: Inactive plugins are listed in a different colored background than active plugins and show an “Activate” link below the plugin name …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Safely In Your Dashboard

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

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins From The WordPress Dashboard

Click Delete

Updating And Deleting Plugins In Your WP Admin Dashboard

If you want to have a look at 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” section …

Upgrading And Deleting WordPress Plugins Safely In The Dashboard

The entire list of files associated with the plugin that you are about to remove will display on your screen …

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely In Your WP Dashboard

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

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins In WordPress

The selected plugins and related files will be removed from your WordPress installation …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete WordPress Plugins Safely In The Dashboard

How To Safely Bulk-Delete Plugins

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

Important

Note: To delete any plugins that are currently active, your will 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 checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins

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

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Safely From The WordPress Admin Dashboard

Click the Apply button …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins In The Dashboard

All selected plugins will be deactivated …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely Inside Your Dashboard

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

How To Upgrade And Delete WordPress Plugins In Your Dashboard

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

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely

Once you have selected all of the plugins that you want deleted, select Delete from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins In WordPress

Click the Apply button …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Inside The WordPress Admin Dashboard

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 certain that you would like to proceed to the next step and remove all of the selected plugins …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

All plugins will be deleted …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely Inside The Dashboard

Practical Management Tools For Plugins

As well as the methods shown above, you can install a range of third-party tools that let you 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.

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"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