In another post, we provide a detailed explanation of what plugins are all about and how you can use plugins to extend your website’s capabilities.

To view this article, go here:

• Using WP Plugins To Improve Your Website’s Functionality

In this tutorial you will learn why plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to easily update and delete plugins, and discover some tips to help you better manage your plugins if you currently manage multiple WordPress sites.

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

Why Some Of Your WordPress Plugins Need To Be Frequently Upgraded

WordPress frequently updates its software (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in older releases, as well as to improve existing features.

Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, you can expect to see at least some new new update notifications 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 built for a previous version. Whenever this happens, conflicts can sometimes develop.

Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are quite proactive when it comes to making sure that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if required). All you have to do as a website owner, is maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is really simple and easy to do.

Keeping your WordPress plugins up-to-date and removing old plugins you no longer need is part of good WordPress management and helps to avoid potential errors or conflicts.

The step-by-step tutorial below explains how to upgrade and delete plugins safely in WordPress without touching web code.

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins – Step-By-Step Tutorial

WordPress employs a number of different methods to inform you when plugins need to be updated.

For example, you can tell immediately how many plugins are out-of-date as soon as you log into your Site’s Dashboard simply by looking at the “Plugins” menu.

For example, in the screenshot below, 9 WP plugins need to be updated …

You can also see how many plugins need updating from your WP Admin Toolbar (the example below shows that several plugins require updating) …

The Plugins screen (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also lets you know which plugins need to be updated …

In addition to providing information about plugins that have available updates, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin developer sites and gives you the option to update the plugin individually or in bulk …

Let’s start by showing you how to upgrade one plugin at a time.

Upgrading Plugins One At A Time

Always make a full backup of your website before updating your blog or website.

From your WP admin menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …

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

(Plugins Page)

Useful Information:

If you have too many plugins and would like to reduce the number of plugins displaying on the screen, 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 Apply …

Your Plugins section 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 “Plugin Search” field …

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

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

Find the plugin that you want to update and click on the update now link …

WordPress provides fast plugin updating, so that updating your plugins takes place with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins screen …

Repeat the above process for any other plugins on your site that need to be updated, or refer to the section below if you have many plugins that are out-of-date and would like to update all plugins in one simple operation.

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Now that you know how to update individual plugins, let’s show you how to update several plugins simultaneously.

Bulk-Upgrading Plugins

To update multiple plugins simultaneously from your admin area, go to the “Plugins” area and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …

Click on the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to update by checking its box …

In the Bulk Actions dropdown menu at the top of the page, select Update …

And then click Apply …

The plugins you have selected will begin updating …

After all plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to your Plugins screen, or choose another option from the WordPress admin menu …

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 on your screen, toolbar and menus) …

You have updated all plugins on your site!

(When plugins on your site are all up-to-date, update messages no longer display)

Now that you know how to upgrade in your WP dashboard, let’s take a look at how to safely uninstall plugins from your blog or website.

Deleting Plugins

At times, you may choose to delete plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This helps to conserve resource usage and help to eliminate causes of some problems.

In this section, you will learn how to safely deactivate and delete unused plugins from your site or blog.

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

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

Hint: Inactive plugins are listed in a different background color than active plugins and show an “Activate” link below the plugin name …

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

Click Delete …

If you need to have a look at 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” section …

The entire list of files belonging to the plugin selected for removalwill be listed on your screen …

If you are positively certain that you want to proceed and delete the selected plugin files, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …

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

How To Bulk-Delete Plugins

You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins on your site, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be removed.

Note: To delete any plugins that are currently 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 check box, or selecting the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …

Next, specify Deactivate from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …

Click Apply …

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 …

Click on the checkbox in 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 selected all the plugins that you want deleted, specify Delete from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …

Click the Apply button …

A list of all selected plugins will show up 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 sure that you would like to proceed to the next step and delete all of the plugins listed …

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

Management Tools For WordPress Plugins

In addition to the methods shown above, you can install a range of third-party 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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