In a previous post, we provide an overview of what plugins are about and how you can use plugins to easily increase your web site’s capabilities.

To read the article, go here:

• Adding New Functionality To Your Web Site With WP Plugins

In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping your plugins up-to-date, how to easily update and uninstall your WordPress plugins, and useful tips to help you better manage your plugins if you plan to manage multiple WordPress sites or blogs.

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

Why Many Of Your Plugins Need To Be Upgraded

WordPress frequently updates its software (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in earlier software versions, as well as to improve existing features or introduce new ones.

Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, there will typically be new new update notices 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 built for a previous version. Whenever this happens, conflicts can sometimes develop.

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 have to do on your end, is simply keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is very easy to do.

Keeping your plugins up-to-date 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 tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins safely without editing web code.

Updating And Deleting Plugins Inside Your Dashboard – Tutorial

WordPress provides a number of different methods to inform users when plugins need updating.

For example, you can instantly see how many plugins need to be updated inside your Admin area by looking at the “Plugins” menu.

In the screenshot below, 9 plugins have older versions that need to be updated …

You can also tell how many plugins need updating from your WP Notification Toolbar (the screenshot below shows how many plugins need updating) …

The Plugins page (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you what plugins need to be updated …

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

Let’s start by showing you how to update individual WordPress plugins.

How To Upgrade Plugins One At A Time

We recommend making a full backup of your website before making any updates to your website or blog.

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

You will be taken to the “Plugins” section. This page can be quite long depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site …

(Plugins Section)

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 screen), then click the ‘Apply’ button …

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

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

Plugins that require upgrading show the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Insert Plugin Name] available” …

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

WordPress provides fast plugin updates, so that the process of updating your plugins happens “behind the scenes” 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 many plugins that are out-of-date and would like to upgrade them all in one simple operation.

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Now that you know how to update one WP plugin at a time, let’s show you how to update several WP plugins simultaneously.

Bulk-Upgrading Plugins

To upgrade multiple WordPress plugins in a single operation 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 …

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

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

Click Apply …

The plugins you have selected will automatically begin to update …

After all upgrades are done, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to the Plugins screen, or choose another option from the main menu …

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” notices no longer display on your screen, toolbar and menus) …

You have updated all plugins on your site!

(When your plugins are all up-to-date, the notification icons no longer display)

Now that you know how to automatically update WP inside your admin dashboard, let’s take a look at how to safely delete plugins from your WordPress site or blog.

How To Safely Delete WP Plugins

Occasionally, you may choose to remove WordPress plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This decreases resources on your server and will help you avoid problems.

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

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 reinstall your site.

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

In the Plugins section, locate 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 …

Click Delete …

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

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

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

Your plugins and related files will be deleted from your WordPress installation …

How To Bulk-Delete Plugins

You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins on your site, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be uninstalled.

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

Next, specify Deactivate from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …

Click the Apply button …

Your selected plugins will be deactivated …

Once you have deactivated your plugins, click on the Inactive 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 only the plugins you want to remove by checking their individual boxes …

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

Click Apply …

A list of all selected plugins will be displayed 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 absolutely sure that you want to go ahead and delete all of the plugins listed …

All plugins will be deleted …

Useful WordPress Tools For Managing WordPress Plugins

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