In a separate post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use these to enhance your site’s capabilities.
You can view this article here:
In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping WordPress plugins up-to-date, how to upgrade and uninstall plugins from your site, and useful plugin management tips if you own or manage multiple WordPress sites.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why WordPress Plugins Need To Be Regularly Upgraded
New versions of WordPress are frequently being released (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in previous software versions, as well as to improve existing features.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, there will typically be new new update notifications for WordPress plugins each time a new version of WordPress is released.
This is because most WordPress plugins are created by external developers, so sometimes the code in the newly-released WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were developed for a previous version. When this happens, conflicts can sometimes occur.
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 this is required). All you need to do as a website owner, is just keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is really quick, simple and easy to do.
Keeping your WordPress plugins regularly updated and deleting old plugins you no longer use is an essential aspect of good WordPress management and helps to avoid potential conflicts or errors.
The WordPress step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins safely inside your WP admin dashboard without requiring web programming skills.
How To Automatically Update And Delete WordPress Plugins Safely – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress has a number of different methods of letting you know when plugins on your blog need to be updated.
For example, you can tell immediately how many plugins are out-of-date from your WP Dashboard just by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
In the screenshot below, you can see that nine plugins are out of date and need updating …
You can also view how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Admin Toolbar (in the screenshot below, you can see how many plugins should be brought up to date) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also notifies you about plugins that need updating …
As well as providing information about plugins that have available updates, the Plugins screen provides links to the plugin download pages and gives you the option to update your plugin instantly …
Let’s start by learning how to upgrade one WP plugin at a time.
Upgrading WordPress Plugins One At A Time
Always make a complete backup of your site files and database before updating your website.
In your dashboard menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
You will be taken to the “Plugins” area. The table of plugins can be quite lengthy depending on how many plugins you have added to your site …
(Plugins Screen)
Additional Information:
If you have too many plugins and would like to reduce the number of plugins showing on your 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 (all plugins show up on the screen by default, i.e. “999”), then click Apply …
Your Plugins area will now be reduced in size with a pagination feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Plugin Search” feature …
You will see information about plugins in different backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (active vs. inactive and out-of-date vs up-to-date) …
Plugins that need upgrading have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Insert Plugin Name] available” …
Find the plugin that needs to be updated and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides streamlined plugin updates, so that the process of updating your plugins happens “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat this process for all plugins on your site that need updating, or refer to the section below if you have many plugins that are out-of-date and would like to update them all at the same time.
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Now that you know how to update individual WordPress plugins, the next step is to learn how to upgrade a bunch of WP plugins simultaneously.
Bulk-Upgrading Plugins
To bulk-update plugins from your admin area, go to the “Plugins” screen 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 only the plugins you want to update by checking its box …
In the Bulk Actions dropdown menu above the list of plugins, choose Update …
And then click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will automatically begin updating …
After the update process has been completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to your Plugins screen, or select another option from the sidebar menu …
Once your plugins are all 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) …
You have updated all plugins on your site to their latest version!
(When plugins on your site are up-to-date, update alerts disappear)
Now that you know how to automatically update WP plugins, let’s take a look at how to safely delete plugins from your blog or website.
Deleting WP Plugins
Occasionally, you may decide to remove plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This decreases resources on your server and helps to eliminate potential problems.
In this section, we show you how to deactivate and delete unused plugins from your WordPress 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 choose Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins area, locate the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is deactivated.
Hint: Inactive plugins appear in a different background color than active plugins and display an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, click on Deactivate before proceeding …
Once you have deactivated the plugin, click Delete …
If you would like to have a look at all the files that will be deleted before going ahead, 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 associated with the plugin selected for removalwill be listed on your screen …
If you are positively sure about going ahead and deleting the selected plugin files, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugins and related files will be deleted …
Deleting Multiple Plugins In Bulk
You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins, 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 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, specify Deactivate from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …
Click Apply …
All selected plugins will be deactivated …
To delete all or some of the inactive plugins, go to the “Plugins” section and click on the Inactive link in the Plugins menu …
Click on the check box in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins 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, select Delete from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …
Click the Apply button …
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 would like to proceed to the next step and delete all of the selected plugins …
The plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
WordPress Management Tools For WordPress Plugins
As well as the methods shown above, you can install other 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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"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