How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

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

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete WordPress Plugins Safely Inside The WordPress Admin DashboardIn a previous post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use plugins to add new features to your blog without editing code.

You can read this article here:

In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping WordPress plugins up-to-date, how to easily upgrade and remove plugins from your site, and discover some tips to help you better manage your plugins.

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

Why Your Plugins Need To Be Frequently Updated

New WordPress versions are constantly being released (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in earlier versions, as well as to improve existing features or introduce new ones.

Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, you can expect to see at least some new new update notices for plugins when WordPress releases a new version.

This is because most plugins for WordPress are created by external developers, so sometimes the code in the new WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were built for a previous version. Whenever this happens, conflicts can sometimes occur.

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 needed). All you need to do as a WordPress user, is just keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is very easy and simple to do.

Useful Info

Keeping your plugins regularly updated and removing old plugins you no longer use is part of good WordPress management and helps to avoid any problems or errors.

The tutorial below explains how to update and delete plugins safely inside the dashboard without editing web code.

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely In WordPress – Step-By-Step Tutorial

WordPress employs several methods to notify you when plugins need updating.

For example, you can immediately see how many plugins need to be updated as soon as you log into your Admin area by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.

In the screenshot below, nine WP plugins have older versions that need updating …

Updating And Deleting Plugins In Your Dashboard

You can also tell how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Toolbar (in the screenshot below, you can again see that 9 plugins should be updated) …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely

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

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

As well as providing information about plugins that have available updates, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin developer pages and gives you the option to update your plugin instantly …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely

Let’s start by learning how to upgrade one plugin at a time.

Update WordPress Plugins One At A Time

Warning

Always make a complete backup of your data and files before upgrading your website.

In your admin menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins

The “Plugins” area will display in your browser. The page can be quite long depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site …

Updating And Deleting Plugins

(Plugins Screen)

Tip

Useful 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), then click Apply …

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely

Your Plugins page will now be reduced in size with a page scrolling feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search” field …

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely From Your WP Dashboard

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

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely

Plugins that need updating have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] available”

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely

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

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely In The Dashboard

WordPress provides smooth and fast plugin updates, so that updating your plugins happens “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins screen …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins

Repeat the above process for any other plugins on your site that need to be updated, 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 upgrade one WP plugin at a time, it’s time to learn how to bulk-upgrade plugins.

How To Bulk-Update Plugins

To bulk-update WP plugins simultaneously using the automatic updating feature, go to the “Plugins” screen and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely In WordPress

Click the checkbox 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 …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Safely In Your WordPress Admin Dashboard

In the Bulk Actions dropdown menu above the table of plugins, select Update

How To Automatically Update And Delete WordPress Plugins In Your Dashboard

Click Apply

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins

The plugins you have selected will automatically begin updating …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely Inside The WP Admin Dashboard

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

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely

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” messages no longer display on your screen, toolbar and menus) …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely

You have updated all plugins on your site!

Updating And Deleting Plugins

(When your site or blog uses the latest version of all plugins, update notices disappear)

Now that you know how to automatically upgrade your in the dashboard, it’s time to learn how to uninstall plugins from your site or blog.

Deleting Plugins

Occasionally, you may want to remove WP plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This helps to reduce server resources and also eliminate causes of problems.

In this section, we show you how to safely deactivate and delete unused plugins from your 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 restore your site.

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

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely

In the Plugins screen, find the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is deactivated.

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

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely From Your WP Admin Dashboard

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

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely Inside The WordPress Admin Dashboard

Once you have deactivated the plugin, click Delete

Updating And Deleting Plugins In WordPress

If you want to browse all the files that will be deleted before taking the next step, then click on the “Click to view entire list of files which will be deleted” link in the “Delete Plugin” section …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely In WordPress

All files associated with the plugin selected for deletionwill be listed on your screen …

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

If you are certain that you want to go ahead and delete the selected plugin, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely

Your plugins and related files will be deleted …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins In WordPress

How To Delete Multiple Plugins In Bulk

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

Info

Note: To delete any plugins that are presently 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 check box, or selecting the check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely

Next, select Deactivate from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely In WordPress

Click the Apply button …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Inside The Dashboard

Your selected plugins will be deactivated …

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Inside The Dashboard

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

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins

Tick the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to delete by checking its box …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

Once you have ticked all the check boxes next to the plugins that you want deleted, specify Delete from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely

Click the Apply button …

Updating And Deleting Plugins From Your WordPress Admin Dashboard

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 certain that you want to go ahead and delete all of the plugins listed …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely In WordPress

All plugins will be deleted …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely In WordPress

Plugin Management – Tools

In addition to the methods shown above, you can install Free and Premium WordPress plugins that let 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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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)

Originally published as How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins.