In a previous post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use these to easily enhance your blog’s capabilities.

You can read this article here:

• Adding New Features And Functionality To Your Blog With Plugins

In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping your WordPress plugins up-to-date, how to easily update and remove your WordPress plugins, and practical plugin management tools if you manage multiple WordPress sites or blogs.

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

Why Many Of Your WordPress Plugins Need To Be Upgraded

New WordPress versions are regularly released (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in earlier software releases, as well as to improve existing features or introduce new functionality to users.

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

This is because most plugins for WordPress are created by third-party developers, so sometimes code in the newly-released WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were developed and tested with a previous version. When 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 this is required). All you need to do on your end, is keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is really simple, quick and easy to do.

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

The tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete WordPress plugins without requiring web coding skills.

How To Update And Delete Plugins – Step-By-Step Tutorial

WordPress provides a few methods to inform users when plugins need to be updated.

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

For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that 9 WordPress plugins have older versions that need to be updated …

You can also view how many plugins need updating from your WP Administration Toolbar (in the example below, you can see how many plugins need updating) …

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

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

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

How To Upgrade WordPress Plugins Individually

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

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

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

(WordPress Plugins Screen)

Additional Information:

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

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

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

Plugins that require upgrading have a distinctive 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 has done away with the loading screen when updating plugins and streamlined the process, so that the process of updating your plugins happens with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins screen …

Repeat the above process for any other plugins on your site that need updating, or see the section below if you have several plugins that are out-of-date and would like to upgrade all plugins in one simple operation.

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Now that you know how to upgrade one plugin at a time, it’s time to learn how to update multiple WP plugins simultaneously.

Bulk-Upgrading Plugins

To bulk-update plugins simultaneously directly inside your dashboard, go to the “Plugins” area 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 each plugin you want to upgrade by checking their individual boxes …

In the Bulk Actions pull-down menu at the top of the page, choose Update …

Click Apply …

The plugins you have selected will all be updated at once …

Once the update process has completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to your Plugins section, or choose a different section of your dashboard …

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) …

All plugins are now up-to-date!

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

Now that you know how to automatically upgrade in your WP dashboard, it’s time to learn how to delete plugins safely from your WordPress site.

How To Safely Delete WordPress Plugins

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

In this section, you will learn how to safely deactivate and delete 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 restore your site.

To delete a plugin, go to your WP admin menu and choose Plugins > Installed Plugins …

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

Hint: Inactive plugins have 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 on Delete …

If you need 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 …

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

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

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

How To Safely Bulk-Delete Plugins

You can delete all inactive plugins at once, 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 check box, or selecting the checkbox 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 Apply …

All selected plugins will be deactivated …

To delete all or some of the inactive plugins, go to the “Plugins” area 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 check box, or click on the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select and delete all inactive plugins …

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

Click the Apply button …

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 sure that you want to proceed to the next step and delete all of the plugins listed …

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

Plugin Management – WordPress Tools

In addition to the methods shown above, you can use WordPress plugins that help 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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