In another post, we provide a detailed explanation of what WP plugins are about and how you can use plugins to add new features and functionality to your website or blog without touching code.

You can read this article here:

• Adding New Functionality To Your Blog With Plugins

In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping all WordPress plugins up-to-date, how to upgrade and delete plugins from your site, and discover useful tools to help you better manage your plugins if you currently run multiple WordPress sites or blogs.

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

Why Your WordPress Plugins Need Upgrading

The WordPress software is regularly updated (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in earlier software releases, as well as to improve existing features.

Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, there will typically be new new update notices for WordPress plugins every.

The reason for this, is because most WordPress plugins are created by third-party developers, so sometimes the code in the new WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were built for a previous version. When this happens, there is a potential for problems to sometimes occur.

Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are very proactive when it comes to making sure 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 simple, quick and easy to do.

Keeping your WordPress plugins up-to-date and removing old plugins you no longer use is an essential aspect of good WordPress management and helps to avoid potential errors and conflicts.

The tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins without coding skills needed.

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely In WordPress – Step-By-Step Tutorial

WordPress utilizes a few methods to let users know when plugins need to be updated.

For example, you can see ‘at a glance’ how many plugins are out-of-date from your Admin area just by looking at the “Plugins” menu.

In the example below, nine WP plugins need to be updated …

You can also see how many plugins need updating from your WP Admin Toolbar (the screenshot below shows that nine plugins need to be updated) …

The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you how many plugins need updating …

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

Let’s start by showing you how to update plugins one at a time.

Upgrade WordPress Plugins One At A Time

We recommend making a full backup of your data and files before making any upgrades to your website.

In your admin menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …

The “Plugins” page will display in your browser. This table of plugins can be quite lengthy depending on the number of plugins you have added to your blog …

(Plugins Page)

Additional Information:

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

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

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

Find 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 updating process, so that the process of updating your plugins takes place “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 several plugins that are out-of-date and would like to upgrade them all in bulk.

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Now that you know how to update WP plugins individually, it’s time to learn how to upgrade a bunch of WordPress plugins simultaneously.

Bulk-Upgrading WP Plugins

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

Click the check box in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to upgrade by checking their individual boxes …

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

Click Apply …

The plugins you have selected will automatically begin to update …

After the update process has been completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to the Plugins section, or go to another section of your dashboard …

Once all plugins are 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” messages no longer display) …

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

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

Now that you know how to automatically upgrade your inside your WP dashboard, let’s show you how to remove plugins safely from your WordPress site.

How To Delete WordPress Plugins

As part of good blog management practices, it’s a good idea to remove plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This can help reduce resource usage and also eliminate problems.

In this section, you will learn how to uninstall unused plugins from your WordPress blog or 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 remove a plugin, go to your main menu and choose Plugins > Installed Plugins …

In the Plugins area, find 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 display an “Activate” link below the plugin name …

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

Once you have deactivated the plugin, click Delete …

If you need to have a look at 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 …

All files associated with the plugin selected for removalwill be listed on your screen …

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

The selected plugin(s) will be deleted …

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

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

Click the Apply button …

All selected plugins will be deactivated …

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

Click on the check box in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to remove by checking its box …

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

Click Apply …

A list of all selected plugins will be displayed 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 proceed to the next step and remove all of the plugins listed …

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

Managing WP Plugins

In addition to the methods shown above, you can install a number of third-party tools that let you 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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