In a separate blog post, we provide an overview of what plugins are about and how you can use plugins to easily enhance your site’s capabilities.
You can read the article here:
In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn why WordPress plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to safely upgrade and delete plugins from your site, and some great tips to help you better manage your plugins.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Many Of Your Plugins Need Regular Upgrading
WordPress regularly updates its software (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in older 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 notifications for 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, issues can sometimes develop.
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 required). All you have to do as a WordPress user, is simply maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is very simple to do.
Keeping your WordPress plugins regularly updated and deleting old plugins you no longer use is an essential aspect of good WordPress management and helps to avoid potential errors and conflicts.
The WordPress step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins in the dashboard without editing web code.
How To Upgrade And Delete WordPress Plugins – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress employs a few ways to let you know when plugins on your blog need updating.
For example, you can instantly see how many plugins need to be updated from your WordPress Dashboard just by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that 9 WP plugins have older versions that need to be updated …
You can also see how many plugins need to be updated from your WordPress Administration Toolbar (the example below shows that several plugins should be updated) …
The Plugins page (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also notifies you about plugins that need updating …
As well as providing information about plugins that have updates available, the Plugins screen provides links to the plugin download sites and gives you the option to update the plugin instantly …
Let’s start by showing you how to update WP plugins individually.
Updating Single A Plugin
Always make a complete backup of your site files and database before upgrading your blog or website.
From your admin menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” area will display in your browser. This list of plugins can be quite long depending on the number of plugins you have added to your blog …
(The WordPress Plugins Screen)
Additional Info:
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 (by default, all plugins display on the page), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
Your Plugins area 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 Plugins” function …
You will see plugin information in different backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (active vs. inactive and out-of-date vs up-to-date) …
Plugins that need upgrading show the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Insert Plugin Name] available” …
Locate the plugin that needs to be updated and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides simpler plugin updates, so that the process of updating your plugins happens “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat this process for all plugins on your site that need to be updated, or refer to the section below if you have several plugins that are out-of-date and would like to upgrade them all at once.
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Now that you know how to update one WP plugin at a time, the next step is to learn how to update a bunch of WP plugins simultaneously.
Bulk-Upgrading Plugins
To bulk-update WordPress plugins directly inside your dashboard, go to the “Plugins” page and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Click the check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to update by checking their individual boxes …
In the Bulk Actions dropdown menu above your plugin table, select Update …
And then click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will begin updating …
Once the update process has completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to the Plugins screen, or visit 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) …
All plugins have now been upgraded!
(When plugins on your site are up-to-date, update notices no longer show)
Now that you know how to automatically upgrade your plugins, let’s show you how to safely uninstall plugins from your WordPress blog or website.
How To Safely Delete Plugins
Occasionally, you may decide to delete WP plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This conserves server resources and also will help you avoid problems.
In this section, you will learn how to remove unused plugins from your site.
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 reinstall your site.
To remove a plugin, go to your dashboard menu and click on Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins area, find the plugin you want to delete and make sure it is deactivated.
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 would like to browse all the files that will be deleted before proceeding any further, 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 deletionwill display on your screen …
If you are absolutely certain that you want to proceed and delete the selected plugin files, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugin(s) will be deleted from your server …
Bulk-Deleting WP Plugins
You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be uninstalled.
Note: To delete any plugins that are presently active, your will 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 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 pull-down menu …
Click the Apply button …
All 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 …
Select all of the plugins you want to delete by either placing a tick next to their checkbox, or click on the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select and delete all inactive plugins …
Once you have ticked all the checkboxes next to the plugins that you want to delete, choose Delete from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …
Click Apply …
A list of all selected plugins will show up 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 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 – WordPress Tools
As well as the methods shown above, you can use a range of 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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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)