In another article, we explain what plugins are and how you can use these to expand your web site’s capabilities.
You can read this article here:
In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping all plugins up-to-date, how to safely upgrade and remove plugins from your site, and discover some plugin management tips.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Many Of Your Plugins Need To Be Upgraded
New versions of WordPress are regularly released (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in older software releases, and to improve existing features or introduce new functionality to WordPress 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 plugins for WordPress are created by third-party developers, so sometimes the code in the new WordPress version conflict with plugins that were developed for a previous version. Whenever this happens, there is a potential for problems to sometimes develop.
Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are fairly proactive when it comes to making sure that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if this is needed). All you have to do as a website owner, is just keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is really 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 any conflicts or errors.
The step-by-step tutorial below explains how to upgrade and delete WordPress plugins safely from the dashboard without requiring web programming knowledge.
Updating And Deleting WordPress Plugins In The Dashboard – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress has a few ways to let you know when your plugins need updating.
For example, you can see ‘at a glance’ how many plugins need to be updated as soon as you log into your WP Dashboard by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
In the example below, 9 WP plugins are out of date and need to be updated …
You can also tell how many plugins need updating from your WP Toolbar (in the screenshot below, you can see how many plugins require updating) …
The Plugins page (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also provides information about plugins that need updating …
In addition to providing information about plugins that have available updates, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin download pages and gives you the option to update your plugin with one-click …
Let’s start by learning how to update individual WP plugins.
Upgrade WordPress Plugins One At A Time
We strongly recommend performing a backup of your website before updating your website or blog.
In your main menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” area will display in your browser. This table of plugins can be quite lengthy depending on the number of plugins you have installed on your site …
(WordPress Plugins Screen)
Additional Info:
If you have too many plugins installed and would like to make this section more manageable, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins page and enter a smaller number of items per page (by default, all plugins display on the screen), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
Your Plugins area 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 Plugins” feature …
You will see information about plugins in different color backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (active vs. inactive and out-of-date vs up-to-date) …
Plugins that need updating show the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin Name] available” …
Locate the plugin that you want to update 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 happens “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat this process for all plugins on your site that need to be updated, or see the section below if you have a number of plugins that are out-of-date and would like to upgrade them all at the same time.
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Now that you know how to update individual plugins, let’s show you how to bulk-update plugins.
How To Bulk-Update Plugins
To upgrade multiple WP plugins in one go from your admin area, go to the “Plugins” page and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Click on 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 drop down menu at the top of the page, choose Update …
Click Apply …
Your selected plugins will begin updating …
After your plugins have all been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to your Plugins area, or visit 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” messages no longer display on your screen, toolbar and menus) …
All plugins are now up-to-date!
(When your site uses the latest version of all plugins, update messages no longer display)
Now that you know how to upgrade your plugins, let’s show you how to remove plugins from your site.
Deleting WP Plugins
Occasionally, you may decide to remove plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This can help decrease resource usage and helps to eliminate potential problems.
In this section, you will learn how to safely deactivate and delete unused plugins from your site or blog.
Always create 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 main menu and click on Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins section, locate the plugin you want to delete and make sure it is deactivated.
Hint: Inactive plugins are listed in a different colored background than active plugins and display an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, click on Deactivate before continuing …
Click Delete …
If you would like 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 …
A complete list of files associated with the plugin that you are about to delete will display on your screen …
If you are positively certain that you want to proceed and delete these plugin, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugins and related files will be removed from your server …
How To Bulk-Delete Plugins
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 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 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, choose Deactivate from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …
Click the Apply button …
Your selected plugins will be deactivated …
Once you have deactivated these plugins, click on the Inactive link on the menu at the top of the page …
Tick the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to delete by checking its box …
Once you have selected all the plugins that you want deleted, choose Delete from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …
Click the Apply button …
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 absolutely sure that you would like to proceed to the next step and delete all of the plugins listed …
All selected plugins will be deleted …
Managing WordPress Plugins – Useful Tools
In addition to the methods shown above, you can install Free and Premium WordPress plugins to 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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