In another blog post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use plugins to add new features to your site with no coding knowledge required.

You can view this article here:

• Using WP Plugins To Enhance Your Site’s Capabilities

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

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

Why Many Plugins Need Updating

The WordPress software is regularly updated (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in older software versions, as well as to improve existing features.

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

The reason for this, is because most WordPress plugins are created by external developers, so sometimes the code in the newly-released WordPress version conflict with plugins that were created and tested to work 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 updating is needed). All you need to do on your end, is just keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is really quick, simple and easy to do.

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

The WordPress step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins without requiring web coding or programming skills or knowledge.

How To Update And Delete Plugins – Tutorial

WordPress uses a number of different methods to inform you when plugins need updating.

For example, you can tell immediately how many plugins need updating as soon as you log into your Admin area simply by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.

In the example below, you can see that 9 WP plugins need to be updated …

You can also see how many plugins need to be updated from your WordPress Admin Toolbar (in the example below, you can again see that nine plugins should be brought up to date) …

The Plugins page (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also notifies you about plugins that need to be updated …

As well as providing information about plugins that have updates available, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin download sites and gives you the option to update your plugin individually or in bulk …

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

Update WordPress Plugins One At A Time

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

From your dashboard menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …

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

(The WordPress Plugins Screen)

Notes:

If you have too many plugins installed and would like to reduce the number of plugins displaying on the page, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins page and type in a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show on the page by default), then click the ‘Apply’ button …

Your Plugins section will now be reduced in size with a page scrolling feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Plugin Search” feature …

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

Plugins that need updating have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Insert 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 update process, so that updating your plugins takes place with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins screen …

Repeat this process for all plugins on your site that need to be updated, or see the section below if you have several 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 plugins one at a time, let’s show you how to update many WP plugins simultaneously.

How To Update Many Plugins

To update multiple plugins in one go from your admin area, go to the “Plugins” page and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …

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

In the Bulk Actions pull-down menu above the plugin list, choose Update …

And then click Apply …

The plugins you have selected will begin updating …

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

Once your plugins are all up-to-date, any plugin alerts will disappear (i.e. the “at-a-glance” indicators and “There is a new version of XYZ plugin available” notices no longer display) …

You have updated all plugins on your site!

(When your site uses the latest version of all plugins, the notification icons disappear)

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

Deleting Plugins

Occasionally, you may decide to remove plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This helps to decrease resources on your server and also will help you avoid causes of problems.

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

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

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

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

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

Next, click on Delete …

If you need to review a list of all the files that will be deleted before going ahead, then click on the “Click to view entire list of files which will be deleted” link in the “Delete Plugin” section …

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

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

Your plugins and related files will be deleted …

Bulk-Deleting Plugins

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

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 checkbox, or selecting the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …

Next, specify Deactivate from the Bulk Actions drop 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 …

Select all of the plugins you want to delete by either placing a tick next to their check box, or click on the check box next to the Plugin column header to select and delete all inactive plugins …

Once you have selected all the plugins that you want deleted, specify Delete from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …

Click Apply …

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 sure that you want to proceed to the next step and remove all of the selected plugins …

Your selected plugins will be deleted …

Plugin Management – WordPress Tools

As well as the methods shown above, you can install other 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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