How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

Learn how to update and delete WordPress plugins inside your WordPress dashboard…

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely From Your DashboardIn a separate blog post, we provide a detailed explanation of what plugins are all about and how you can use these to easily extend your blog’s functionality.

To view this article, go here:

In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping your WordPress plugins up-to-date, how to safely update and remove plugins from your site, and discover practical tools to help you better manage your plugins if you currently own or manage multiple WordPress sites.

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

Why WordPress Plugins Need To Be Upgraded

WordPress frequently updates its software (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered 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 when new versions of WordPress are released.

This is because most WordPress plugins are created by external developers, so sometimes the code in the newly-released WordPress version conflict with plugins that were built for a previous version. Whenever this happens, there is a potential for issues to sometimes develop.

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

Useful Information

Keeping your WordPress plugins regularly updated and deleting old plugins you no longer use is part of good WordPress management and helps to avoid potential errors or conflicts.

The WordPress tutorial below explains how to update and delete plugins without requiring web coding or programming skills.

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

WordPress employs a few ways to notify users when plugins need to be updated.

For example, you can instantly see how many plugins are out-of-date from your Administration panel just by looking at the “Plugins” menu.

In the screenshot below, you can see that 9 WP plugins have older versions that need updating …

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins

You can also tell how many plugins need updating from your WP Toolbar (the screenshot below shows that a number of plugins need to be updated) …

Updating And Deleting Plugins

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

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely In WordPress

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 plugins individually or in bulk …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins

Let’s start by showing you how to update plugins one at a time.

Update Individual A Plugin

Warning

We strongly recommend performing a complete backup of your data and files before updating your website.

From your WP admin menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely

You will be taken to the “Plugins” screen. The list of plugins can flow down your page for some length, depending on the number of plugins you have installed on your blog …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely In The Dashboard

(Plugins Screen)

Practical Tip

Additional Info:

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

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely

Your Plugins page will now be made more manageable with a ’numbered pages’ feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search” function …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins In Your Dashboard

You will see information about plugins in different color backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (inactive vs. active and up-to-date vs. outdated) …

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely In The WordPress Dashboard

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

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely Inside Your Dashboard

Locate the plugin that needs to be updated and click on the update now link …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins

WordPress has done away with the loading screen when updating plugins and streamlined the process, so that updating your plugins takes place with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins area …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Inside Your WordPress Admin Dashboard

Repeat the above 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 update them all at the same time.

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Now that you know how to upgrade individual WordPress plugins, the next step is to learn how to upgrade a bunch of plugins simultaneously.

How To Update Several WordPress Plugins Simultaneously

To bulk-update WP plugins simultaneously directly inside your dashboard, go to the “Plugins” section and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins In The WordPress Admin Dashboard

Click the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to upgrade by checking their individual boxes …

Updating And Deleting Plugins In WordPress

In the Bulk Actions pull-down menu above your plugin table, choose Update

Upgrading And Deleting WordPress Plugins Safely

Click Apply

How To Update And Delete Plugins

Your selected plugins will begin updating …

Updating And Deleting WordPress Plugins

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

Updating And Deleting Plugins

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” notices no longer display) …

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Inside Your WordPress Dashboard

All plugins are now up-to-date!

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins

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

Now that you know how to automatically update your plugins, it’s time to learn how to remove plugins from your blog or website.

How To Safely Delete Plugins

It’s a good idea to delete plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This helps to decrease resources on your server and eliminate problems.

In this section, we show you how to remove unused plugins from your WordPress blog or site.

Warning

We strongly recommend creating a full back up of your WordPress site before installing, upgrading or deleting plugins, in case something goes wrong and you need to recover data or reinstall your site.

To delete a plugin, go to your dashboard menu and click on Plugins > Installed Plugins

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins

In the Plugins section, locate the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is inactive.

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

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Inside The Dashboard

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

Upgrading And Deleting WordPress Plugins In Your Dashboard

Click Delete

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete WordPress Plugins Safely Inside The Dashboard

If you need to review a list of 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 …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely From Your WP Admin Dashboard

All files belonging to the plugin that you are about to remove will display on your screen …

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely

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

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins Safely

Your plugin(s) will be deleted …

Updating And Deleting WordPress Plugins In The Dashboard

Deleting Several WordPress Plugins At Once

You can delete all inactive plugins at once, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be deleted.

Important Info

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) …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

Next, select Deactivate from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely

Click the Apply button …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Inside The WordPress Dashboard

Your selected plugins will be deactivated …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely From The Dashboard

Once you have deactivated these plugins, click on the Inactive link on the menu at the top of the page …

How To Update And Delete Plugins From The Dashboard

Click the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to delete by checking their individual boxes …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely In Your Dashboard

Once you have selected all the plugins that you want to delete, select Delete from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …

Updating And Deleting Plugins

Click Apply

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins

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 remove all of the plugins listed …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely

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

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Inside Your Dashboard

Managing WP Plugins – Useful WordPress Tools

As well as the methods shown above, you can install WordPress plugins that help you manage your plugins.

Health Check & troubleshooting

Health Check & Troubleshooting WordPress plugin
Health Check identifies common problems and helps you troubleshoot plugin and theme conflicts.

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

WPMU DEV's The Hub - Unlimited WordPress Site Management
WPMU DEV’s The Hub – Unlimited WordPress Site Management

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.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Updates menu

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.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Updates menu

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.

The Hub - Update notifications.
This feature can help you save a lot of time updating multiple WordPress sites, especially when WordPress releases a new version of its software.

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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Originally published as How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins.