In a separate article, we provide a detailed explanation of what WordPress plugins are about and how you can use plugins to easily add new features to your website with no coding skills required.

You can read the article here:

• Adding New Functionality To Your Website With Plugins

In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn why WordPress plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to safely update and delete plugins, and some great plugin management tools.

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

Why WordPress Plugins Need Frequent Upgrading

The WordPress software is constantly updated (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in older software releases, and to improve existing features or introduce new ones.

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 each time a new version of WordPress is made available.

This is because most WordPress plugins are created by external developers, so sometimes features in the new WordPress version conflict with plugins that were created and tested to work with a previous version. When this happens, conflicts can sometimes develop.

Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are fairly proactive when it comes to ensuring that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if this is needed). All you have to do on your end, is keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is very simple, quick and easy to do.

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

The WordPress step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete WordPress plugins without editing web code.

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely – Step-By-Step Tutorial

WordPress employs several ways to alert users when plugins need to be updated.

For example, you can tell immediately how many plugins are out-of-date from your WordPress Dashboard simply by looking at the “Plugins” menu.

In the example below, nine plugins have older versions that need to be updated …

You can also view how many plugins need to be updated from your WordPress Notification Toolbar (the example below shows that several plugins should be brought up to date) …

The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also notifies you about plugins that need updating …

In addition to providing information about plugins that have available updates, the Plugins screen provides links to the plugin developer pages and gives you the option to update your plugins with one-click …

Let’s start by learning how to update one WP plugin at a time.

Upgrade Single Plugins

Always make a backup of your website before upgrading your website or blog.

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

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

(Plugins Page)

Notes:

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

Your Plugins section 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 Installed Plugins” feature …

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

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

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

WordPress provides smoother plugin updates, so that updating your plugins takes place “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins screen …

Repeat the above 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 all plugins at once.

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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-Updating WordPress Plugins

To update multiple plugins at the same time directly inside your dashboard, go to the “Plugins” screen and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …

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 …

In the Bulk Actions drop down menu at the top of the page, select Update …

Click Apply …

The plugins you have selected will begin to update automatically …

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

Once your plugins are all up-to-date, the plugin notifications will 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) …

All plugins are now up-to-date!

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

Now that you know how to update plugins, let’s show you how to safely delete plugins from your WordPress site.

How To Safely Remove Plugins

At times, you may want to delete plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This helps to decrease resources on your server and help to minimize potential problems.

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

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 restore your site.

To remove a plugin, go to your WP admin menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …

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

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

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

Once you have deactivated the plugin, click Delete …

If you need to browse 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” page …

All files belonging to the plugin that you are about to remove will be listed on your screen …

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

Your plugin(s) will be deleted …

Deleting Several Plugins At Once

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 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) …

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

Click Apply …

The selected plugins will be deactivated …

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

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

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 …

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 absolutely certain that you would like to go ahead and delete all of the selected plugins …

All plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …

Useful Management Tools For Plugins

In addition to the methods shown above, you can use 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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