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

You can read the article here:

• Using WP Plugins To Extend Your Web Site’s Capability

In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping WordPress plugins up-to-date, how to update and uninstall plugins, and practical tools to help you better manage your plugins if you manage multiple WordPress sites.

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

Why Some 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 discovered in earlier versions, and to improve existing features or introduce new functionality to WordPress users.

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

The reason for this, is because most plugins for WordPress are created by external developers, so sometimes code in the new WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were developed for a previous version. When this happens, there is a potential for conflicts to sometimes develop.

Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are fairly proactive when it comes to ensuring that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if needed). All you need to do as a WordPress user, is keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is really easy and simple to do.

Keeping your plugins regularly updated and removing old plugins you no longer use is an essential aspect of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid errors and problems.

The WordPress tutorial below explains how to upgrade and delete plugins safely from your WordPress dashboard without requiring coding skills or knowledge.

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

WordPress uses a number of different ways to let users know when plugins on their blog need to be updated.

For example, you can immediately see how many plugins are out-of-date inside your Administration panel simply by looking at the “Plugins” menu.

In the example below, nine plugins are out of date and need updating …

You can also tell how many plugins need to be updated from your WordPress Admin Toolbar (as shown below, a number of plugins need updating) …

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

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

Let’s start by learning how to update WP plugins individually.

Upgrading WordPress Plugins Individually

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

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

The “Plugins” screen will display in your browser. The table of plugins can run down your page for a while, depending on how many plugins you have added to your site …

(Plugins Page)

Useful Information:

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 area and type in a smaller number of items per page (by default, all plugins display on the screen), then click the ‘Apply’ button …

Your Plugins page 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 information about plugins in different backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (active vs. inactive and up-to-date vs. out-of-date) …

Plugins that need updating 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 happens “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins area …

Repeat this process for any other plugins on your site that need updating, or refer to the section below if you have a number of plugins that are out-of-date and would like to upgrade them all in bulk.

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

Bulk-Upgrading WP Plugins

To update multiple WordPress plugins in one go 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 on the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to upgrade by checking its box …

In the Bulk Actions pull-down menu above the plugin list, choose Update …

And then click Apply …

Your selected plugins will begin to update automatically …

Once all plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to the Plugins screen, or go to another section of your dashboard …

Once all plugins are up-to-date, the update reminders 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) …

All plugins are now up-to-date!

(When your plugins are all up-to-date, the notification icons no longer show)

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

How To Remove WordPress Plugins

Occasionally, you may choose to delete WP plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This decreases resource usage and also eliminate causes of problems.

In this section, we show you how to 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 admin menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …

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

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

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

Click Delete …

If you need to browse all the files that will be deleted before proceeding, then click on the “Click to view entire list of files which will be deleted” link in the “Delete Plugin” page …

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

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

The selected plugin(s) will be deleted from your WordPress installation …

Deleting Multiple Plugins At Once

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

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 checkbox, or selecting the check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …

Next, specify Deactivate from the Bulk Actions pull-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 …

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 deleted, specify Delete from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …

Click Apply …

A list of all selected plugins will display 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 go ahead and remove all of the plugins listed …

Your plugins will be deleted …

Tools For Managing Plugins

In addition to the methods shown above, you can install a range of 3rd-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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