In a separate blog post, we provide an overview of what WordPress plugins are all about and how you can use plugins to extend your web site’s functionality.
To view this article, go here:
In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping plugins up-to-date, how to upgrade and uninstall your WordPress plugins, and discover practical tools to help you better manage your plugins.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Some Of Your Plugins Need To Be Upgraded
New versions of WordPress are frequently being released (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 plugins when new versions of WordPress are released.
The reason for this, is because most WordPress plugins are created by external developers, so sometimes features in the newly-released WordPress version conflict with plugins that were created and tested to work with a previous version. Whenever this happens, there is a potential for problems to sometimes occur.
Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are very proactive when it comes to making sure that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if needed). All you have to do on your end, is just keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is really simple to do.
Keeping your WordPress plugins up-to-date and deleting old plugins you no longer need is an essential aspect of good WordPress management and helps to avoid any potential conflicts or errors.
The WordPress tutorial below explains how to update and delete plugins without coding skills or knowledge needed.
Updating And Deleting Plugins – Tutorial
WordPress provides a number of different ways to inform users when plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can see ‘at a glance’ how many plugins are out-of-date from your Administration site just by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that 9 plugins have older versions that need updating …
You can also see how many plugins need to be updated from your WordPress Toolbar (in the example below, you can see how many plugins should be updated) …
The Plugins screen (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also lets you know which plugins need updating …
As well as providing information about which plugins have available updates, the Plugins screen provides links to the plugin developer pages and gives you the option to update the plugins with one-click …
Let’s start by learning how to update one WP plugin at a time.
Upgrade Single A Plugin
Always make a full backup of your website before upgrading your website.
In your dashboard menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
You will be taken to the “Plugins” section. The table of plugins can go down your page for some length, depending on the number of plugins you have installed on your site …
(Plugins Section)
Useful Information:
If you have too many plugins and would like to reduce the number of plugins displaying on your screen, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins area and enter a smaller number of items per page (by default, all plugins display on the page), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
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 “Search Plugins” box …
You will see information about plugins in different backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (inactive vs. active and out-of-date vs up-to-date) …
Plugins that need updating display the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] available” …
Select the plugin that you want to update 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 screen …
Repeat the above process for any other plugins on your site that need updating, or see the section below if you have many 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 WordPress plugin at a time, it’s time to learn how to bulk-upgrade plugins.
Bulk-Updating Plugins
To bulk-update plugins simultaneously from your admin area, go to the “Plugins” page and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Tick the check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to update by checking their individual boxes …
In the Bulk Actions dropdown menu at the top of the page, choose Update …
And then click Apply …
Your selected plugins will all be updated at once …
After all plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to the Plugins screen, or go to another section of your dashboard …
Once your plugins are all 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” messages no longer display on your screen, toolbar and menus) …
All plugins have now been updated!
(When your site uses the latest version of all plugins, notification icons no longer display)
Now that you know how to upgrade plugins, let’s show you how to safely uninstall plugins from your WordPress site.
How To Delete WP Plugins
Occasionally, you may decide to delete WordPress plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This helps to conserve resource usage and also help to minimize causes of some problems.
In this section, you will learn how to safely delete unused plugins from your blog or site.
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 delete a plugin, go to your WP admin menu and choose Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins page, locate the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is deactivated.
Hint: Inactive plugins are listed in a different colored background than active plugins and display an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, then click on Deactivate before proceeding with your plugin deletion …
Next, click Delete …
If you would like to review a list of 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” screen …
All files belonging to the plugin selected for deletionwill display on your screen …
If you are certain about going ahead and deleting these plugin files, click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugins and related files will be removed from your server …
Deleting Multiple WP Plugins At Once
You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be cleared.
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 checkbox, 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, select Deactivate from the Bulk Actions pull-down 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” screen and click on the Inactive link on the main menu …
Tick 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 ticked all the check boxes next to the plugins that you want deleted, select Delete from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …
Click Apply …
A list of all selected plugins will show up 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 delete all of the selected plugins …
Your selected plugins will be deleted …
Management Tools For Plugins
As well as the methods shown above, you can install 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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