How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

Learn how to update and delete WordPress plugins inside your WordPress dashboard…

Upgrading And Deleting WordPress PluginsIn another article, we explain what plugins are and how you can use plugins to expand your blog’s functionality.

You can view this article here:

In this tutorial you will learn why WordPress plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to safely upgrade and uninstall plugins from your site, and discover useful tools to help you better manage your plugins if you run or manage multiple WordPress sites or blogs.

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

Why Some Of Your Plugins Need Updating

New WordPress versions are constantly being released (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in previous software versions, as well as to improve existing features or introduce new functionality to WordPress users.

Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, you can expect to see at least some new new update notifications for WordPress plugins every.

The reason for this, is because most plugins for WordPress are created by external developers, so sometimes the code in the newly-released WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were developed and tested with a previous version. When 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 updating is required). All you need to do as a website owner, is maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is very simple and easy to do.

Useful Info

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

The WordPress step-by-step tutorial below explains how to upgrade and delete plugins safely in the dashboard without editing web code.

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely – Tutorial

WordPress employs a number of different ways to inform you when plugins need to be updated.

For example, you can see how many plugins need updating from your Admin area 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For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that 9 WordPress plugins are out of date and need updating …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins In WordPress

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

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Safely In The Dashboard

The Plugins screen (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also lets you know which plugins need updating …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Inside Your WordPress Dashboard

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

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely

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

Updating Single A Plugin

Warning

We strongly recommend performing a full backup of your data and files before upgrading your blog or website.

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

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

The “Plugins” screen will display in your browser. The list of plugins can run down your page for a while, depending on how many plugins you have installed in your site …

How To Update And Delete Plugins

(WordPress Plugins Section)

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

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Safely In WordPress

Your Plugins area 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 Installed Plugins” field …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Inside Your WordPress Dashboard

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

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins In The Dashboard

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

Upgrading And Deleting WordPress Plugins Safely In Your Dashboard

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

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely In WordPress

WordPress has done away with the loading screen when updating plugins and streamlined the plugin updating process, so that the process of updating your plugins happens with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins area …

How To Automatically Update And Delete WordPress Plugins Safely

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 update them all in one simple operation.

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Now that you know how to update plugins individually, it’s time to learn how to bulk-upgrade plugins.

How To Bulk-Update Plugins

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

How To Update And Delete Plugins

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

How To Update And Delete Plugins Inside Your Dashboard

In the Bulk Actions pull-down menu above your plugin table, select Update

Updating And Deleting Plugins In Your Dashboard

Click Apply

Updating And Deleting Plugins In WordPress

Your selected plugins will automatically begin to update …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins In WordPress

Once your plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to the Plugins area, or choose another option from the main menu …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Inside The Dashboard

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

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Safely In The Dashboard

All plugins are now up-to-date!

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely

(When plugins on your site are up-to-date, update icons no longer display)

Now that you know how to automatically upgrade WP inside the dashboard, let’s show you how to uninstall plugins safely from your blog or website.

Deleting WordPress Plugins

It’s a good idea to remove inactive plugins. This reduces resources on your server and help to eliminate potential problems.

In this section, we show you how to safely uninstall unused plugins from your WordPress site or blog.

Warning

Always create 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 remove a plugin, go to your WP admin menu and choose Plugins > Installed Plugins

Updating And Deleting WordPress Plugins Safely

In the Plugins section, 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 …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Safely In WordPress

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

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins

Once you have deactivated the plugin, click Delete

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely From The Dashboard

If you would like to have a look at 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” page …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins In WordPress

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

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely In WordPress

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

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely

Your plugin(s) will be deleted …

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

How To Bulk-Delete Plugins

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

Info

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) …

Upgrading And Deleting WordPress Plugins

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

Updating And Deleting Plugins

Click Apply

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely In WordPress

The selected plugins will be deactivated …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins From The Dashboard

To delete all or some of the inactive plugins on your site, go to the “Plugins” page and click on the Inactive link in the Plugins menu …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins In The WP Dashboard

Tick the check box in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to delete by checking their individual boxes …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely

Once you have selected all the plugins that you want to delete, choose Delete from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …

Upgrading And Deleting WordPress Plugins Safely

Click Apply

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins From The Dashboard

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 delete all of the selected plugins …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

All selected plugins will be deleted …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely From Your WP Admin Dashboard

WordPress Management Tools For WordPress Plugins

As well as the methods shown above, you can install a number of tools that let you manage your WordPress 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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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)