In a separate article, we explain what plugins are and how you can use these to easily add new features or functionality to your website or blog with no software programming knowledge required.
To read the article, go here:
In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping your plugins up-to-date, how to upgrade and remove plugins from your site, and discover some plugin management tips.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Some Of Your Plugins Need To Be Frequently Updated
The WordPress software is constantly updated (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in earlier releases, and to improve existing features.
Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, there will typically be new updates for plugins whenever new WordPress versions are announced.
The reason for this, is because most WordPress plugins are created by 3rd-party developers, so sometimes code in the new WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were created and tested to work with a previous version. Whenever this happens, conflicts can 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 required). All you need to do as a website owner, is simply keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is really simple to do.
Keeping your WordPress 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 or problems.
The tutorial below explains how to upgrade and delete plugins in your dashboard without touching web code.
How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins – Tutorial
WordPress utilizes a few methods to alert users when plugins need updating.
For example, you can see ‘at a glance’ how many plugins are out-of-date inside your WP Dashboard by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, 9 WordPress plugins have older versions that need updating …
You can also view how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Administration Toolbar (as shown below, several plugins need updating) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also provides information about plugins that need updating …
In addition to providing information about which plugins have updates available, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin download sites and gives you the option to update the plugin individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by learning how to update one plugin at a time.
Updating Individual Plugins
We strongly recommend making a full backup of your site files and database before making any changes to your website or blog.
In your main menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” page will display in your browser. This table of plugins can be quite long depending on how many plugins you have installed in your site …
(Plugins Page)
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 area and enter a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show on the page by default, i.e. “999”), then click Apply …
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” box …
You will see plugin information in different color backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (inactive vs. active and outdated vs up-to-date) …
Plugins that require upgrading show the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin Name] available” …
Find the plugin that needs updating and click on the update now link …
WordPress has done away with the loading screen when updating plugins and streamlined the plugin updating process, so that updating your plugins takes place “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 in bulk.
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Now that you know how to update WP plugins one at a time, let’s show you how to bulk-upgrade WordPress plugins.
How To Bulk-Upgrade WordPress Plugins
To upgrade multiple WordPress plugins in a single operation 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 checkbox in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to upgrade by checking their individual boxes …
In the Bulk Actions drop down menu above your plugin table, choose Update …
And then click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will all be updated at once …
Once all plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to the Plugins section, or choose another option from the main menu …
Once all plugins are up-to-date, the plugin notifications 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 plugins are all up-to-date, notification icons no longer appear)
Now that you know how to update your plugins, let’s show you how to uninstall plugins safely from your blog or website.
Deleting WP Plugins
It’s a good idea to uninstall plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This reduces server resources and also help you avoid potential problems.
In this section, you will learn how to safely delete 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 dashboard menu and choose Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins page, find the plugin you want to delete and make sure it is inactive.
Hint: Inactive plugins have 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 proceeding …
Click Delete …
If you would like 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” screen …
All files belonging to the plugin that you are about to delete will display on your screen …
If you are absolutely certain about going ahead and deleting these plugin files, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugin(s) will be removed from your WordPress installation …
How To Delete Multiple WP Plugins At Once
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 check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …
Once you have done this, specify Deactivate from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …
Click the Apply button …
Your selected plugins will be deactivated …
To delete all or some of the inactive plugins on your site, go to the “Plugins” section and click on the Inactive link on the main menu …
Select all of the plugins you want to delete by either placing a tick next to their checkbox, or click on the check box next to the Plugin column header to select and delete all inactive plugins …
Once you have ticked all the check boxes next to the plugins that you want to delete, select Delete from the Bulk Actions drop-down 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 sure that you want to go ahead and delete all of the selected plugins …
The plugins will be deleted …
Plugin Management – Useful Tools
In addition to the methods shown above, you can use WordPress plugins to 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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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum