How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

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

Updating And Deleting Plugins SafelyIn a separate post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use plugins to easily add new features and functionality to your blog without editing code.

To view this article, go here:

In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn why WordPress plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to easily update and remove your WordPress plugins, and some tips to help you better manage your plugins if you manage multiple WordPress sites or blogs.

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

Why Your WordPress Plugins Need Upgrading

WordPress frequently updates its software (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in previous releases, and to improve existing features.

Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, there will typically be new new update notifications for plugins each time a new version of WordPress is made available.

The reason for this, is because most plugins for WordPress are created by third-party 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, 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 making sure that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if updating is required). All you have to do as a WordPress user, is simply keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is very easy to do.

Info

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

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

How To Update And Delete Plugins In Your WP Admin Dashboard – Tutorial

WordPress utilizes a few methods of letting users know when plugins on their site need to be updated.

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

For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that nine WP plugins need to be updated …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins In WordPress

You can also check how many plugins need updating from your WP Admin Toolbar (in the example below, you can see how many plugins need to be updated) …

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely

The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also lets you know which plugins need to be updated …

Updating And Deleting WordPress Plugins Safely

In addition to providing information about which plugins have updates available, the Plugins screen provides links to the plugin developer sites and gives you the option to update the plugins individually or in bulk …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins In Your WordPress Admin Dashboard

Let’s start by learning how to upgrade plugins one at a time.

Updating Individual Plugins

Warning

We strongly recommend performing a full backup of your site files and database before making any upgrades to your website or blog.

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

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely

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

Updating And Deleting WordPress Plugins In The Dashboard

(The WordPress Plugins Page)

Tip

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 enter a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show up on the page by default, i.e. “999”), then click Apply …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

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

Upgrading And Deleting WordPress Plugins In The Dashboard

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

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

Plugins in need of updating have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] available”

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely From The Dashboard

Locate the plugin that needs updating and click on the update now link …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins In WordPress

WordPress has done away with the loading screen when updating plugins and streamlined the plugin update process, so that updating your plugins takes place “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins area …

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely

Repeat this process for any other plugins on your site that need to be updated, 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 the same time.

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

Bulk-Upgrading WordPress Plugins

To bulk-upgrade WP plugins simultaneously directly inside your dashboard, go to the “Plugins” page and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Safely From The WP Dashboard

Tick the check box in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to update by checking its box …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Safely

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

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely In WordPress

And then click Apply

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely

Your selected plugins will begin to update automatically …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely In WordPress

After all plugin updates are completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to your Plugins section, or choose another option from the WP dashboard menu …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins

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” notices no longer display) …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely

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

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely Inside Your WP Admin Dashboard

(When plugins on your site are all up-to-date, notification icons disappear)

Now that you know how to automatically update your plugins, it’s time to learn how to safely remove plugins from your WordPress site or blog.

How To Safely Remove WordPress Plugins

As part of smart WordPress management, it’s a good idea to remove plugins that you no longer require. This conserves resource usage and also eliminates problems.

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

Warning

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 restore your site.

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

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins

In the Plugins page, locate the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is deactivated.

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

How To Update And Delete Plugins In The WP Dashboard

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

Updating And Deleting Plugins Inside The WordPress Admin Dashboard

Next, click on Delete

How To Automatically Update And Delete WordPress Plugins Safely

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” screen …

Upgrading And Deleting WordPress Plugins Safely

The entire list of files belonging to the plugin selected for deletionwill display on your screen …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins

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

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins

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

How To Update And Delete Plugins

Bulk-Deleting Plugins

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

Useful Info

Note: To delete any plugins that are presently 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) …

Updating And Deleting Plugins

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

Updating And Deleting Plugins Inside Your Dashboard

Click the Apply button …

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins In Your WP Dashboard

Your selected plugins will be deactivated …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins From The WordPress Admin Dashboard

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

Updating And Deleting WordPress Plugins Safely From The Dashboard

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 …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Inside The WordPress Dashboard

Once you have ticked all the check boxes next to the plugins that you want to delete, select Delete from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …

Updating And Deleting Plugins In WordPress

Click Apply

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Inside The WordPress 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 want to go ahead and delete all of the selected plugins …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely

Your plugins will be deleted …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely

Managing WP Plugins – WordPress Tools

As well as the methods shown above, you can install a range of tools that help 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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