In a previous article, we explain what plugins are and how you can use plugins to easily add new features to your web site without touching code.

To read the article, go here:

• Add New Features And Functionality To Your Blog With WP Plugins

In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn why plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to easily update and uninstall plugins from your site, and useful plugin management tools if you need to manage multiple WordPress sites.

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

Why Many Of Your WordPress Plugins Need To Be Upgraded

New versions of WordPress are frequently being released (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in older software versions, and 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 new update notices for plugins each time a new WordPress version is made available.

This is because most WordPress plugins are created by external developers, so sometimes code in the newly-released WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were created and tested to work with a previous version. Whenever this happens, there is a potential for issues to 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 need to do as a website owner, 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 need is an essential aspect of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid any conflicts and errors.

The step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins safely without requiring web programming skills or knowledge.

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely Inside The WordPress Dashboard – Tutorial

WordPress utilizes a few methods of letting you know when your plugins need updating.

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

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

You can also tell how many plugins need to be updated from your WordPress Admin Toolbar (as shown below, nine plugins should be updated) …

The Plugins screen (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also lets you know which plugins need updating …

As well as providing information about plugins that have available updates, the Plugins section 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 upgrade plugins individually.

Upgrading WordPress Plugins One At A Time

Always make a backup of your site files and database before making any changes to your website.

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

The “Plugins” screen will display in your browser. The screen can be quite long depending on the number of plugins you have installed on your site …

(WordPress Plugins Section)

Additional Info:

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

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

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

Plugins in need of upgrading have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] available” …

Find 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 updating your plugins takes place “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins area …

Repeat the above process for all 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 update them all at once.

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Now that you know how to upgrade individual WordPress plugins, let’s show you how to upgrade many WordPress plugins simultaneously.

How To Update Several Plugins

To update multiple WordPress plugins in a single operation using the automatic upgrading feature, go to the “Plugins” screen 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 update by checking their individual boxes …

In the Bulk Actions dropdown menu above the plugin list, select Update …

And then click Apply …

Your selected plugins will begin to update automatically …

After all plugin upgrades are done, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to your Plugins screen, or visit another section of your dashboard …

Once all plugins are 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” notices no longer display) …

All plugins have now been updated!

(When your plugins are all up-to-date, update alerts do not display)

Now that you know how to automatically upgrade your plugins, it’s time to learn how to uninstall plugins safely from your WordPress site or blog.

How To Delete Plugins

It’s a good idea to delete plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This can decrease resources on your server and help to eliminate potential problems.

In this section, you will learn how to safely uninstall unused plugins from your WordPress blog or 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 restore your site.

To remove a plugin, go to your main menu and choose Plugins > Installed Plugins …

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

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

If the plugin is active, click on Deactivate before continuing …

Next, click on Delete …

If you would like to browse 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” page …

A complete list of files associated with the plugin that you are about to delete will display on your screen …

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

Your plugin(s) will be deleted …

How To Safely Delete Multiple WP Plugins In Bulk

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 currently 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 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 dropdown menu …

Click the Apply button …

The selected plugins will be deactivated …

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

Click on the check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to delete 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 dropdown menu …

Click Apply …

A list of all selected plugins will display 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 selected plugins …

Your plugins will be deleted …

Management Tools For Plugins

In addition to the methods shown above, you can use a number of tools that help 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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