How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

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

Updating And Deleting WordPress PluginsIn another blog post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use plugins to easily extend your web site’s functionality.

To read the article, go here:

In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn why plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to update and uninstall your WordPress plugins, and some great plugin management tips.

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

Why Some Of Your Plugins Need To Be Frequently Upgraded

New versions of WordPress are regularly released (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in older software releases, and to improve existing features.

Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, there will typically be new updates for WordPress plugins when new versions of WordPress are released.

The reason for this, is because most plugins for WordPress are created by 3rd-party developers, so sometimes code in the newly-released WordPress version conflict with plugins that were created and tested to work with a previous version. When this happens, problems can sometimes develop.

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 on your end, is simply keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is very simple to do.

Important Info

Keeping your WordPress plugins up-to-date and removing old plugins you no longer use is part of good WordPress management and helps to avoid errors or conflicts.

The WordPress step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins safely without requiring web programming skills or knowledge.

How To Update And Delete Plugins In Your Dashboard – Tutorial

WordPress provides several methods to alert you when plugins need to be updated.

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

In the example below, 9 WP plugins are out of date and need updating …

How To Upgrade And Delete WordPress Plugins

You can also tell how many plugins need updating from your WP Admin Toolbar (as shown below, nine plugins require updating) …

Upgrading And Deleting WordPress Plugins Safely Inside Your Dashboard

The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you what plugins need updating …

How To Update And Delete Plugins

In addition to providing information about which plugins have updates available, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin developer pages and gives you the option to update the plugin with one-click …

How To Update And Delete Plugins In The WP Admin Dashboard

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

How To Update Plugins Individually

Warning

We strongly recommend performing a backup of your website before updating your website.

From your dashboard menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins

You will be taken to the “Plugins” section. The page can be quite lengthy depending on the number of plugins you have installed on your site …

Updating And Deleting Plugins

(WordPress Plugins Section)

Useful Tip

Additional Info:

If you have too many plugins and would like to reduce the number of plugins displayed on your screen, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins page and enter a smaller number of items per page (by default, all plugins display on the screen), then click the ‘Apply’ button …

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely

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” function …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely Inside Your WP Dashboard

WordPress displays information about plugins in different color backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (active vs. inactive and up-to-date vs. out-of-date) …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely In Your Dashboard

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

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely Inside The WordPress Dashboard

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

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins In WordPress

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

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

Repeat the above process for any other plugins on your site that need updating, or see the section below if you have a number of plugins that are out-of-date and would like to update all plugins at once.

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Now that you know how to update one plugin at a time, it’s time to learn how to bulk-upgrade WordPress plugins.

Bulk-Updating WP Plugins

To update multiple WP plugins simultaneously using the automatic upgrade feature, go to the “Plugins” area and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely

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 its box …

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins

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

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Safely Inside The Dashboard

And then click Apply

Updating And Deleting Plugins In WordPress

The plugins you have selected will begin the update process …

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Inside Your Dashboard

Once all plugin updates are done, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to your Plugins area, or choose another option from the WordPress admin menu …

Updating And Deleting Plugins From The WordPress Admin Dashboard

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) …

How To Update And Delete Plugins From The WordPress Admin Dashboard

You have updated all plugins on your site!

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely In The Dashboard

(When plugins on your site are up-to-date, update messages do not display)

Now that you know how to update your plugins, let’s show you how to safely delete plugins safely from your WordPress site.

How To Safely Delete WP Plugins

As part of good WordPress management, it’s a good idea to delete inactive plugins. This decreases resources on your server and help to reduce causes of some problems.

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

Warning

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 WP admin menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely In The Dashboard

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

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

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete WordPress Plugins

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

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely

Next, click on Delete

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Safely

If you want to review a list of all the files that will be deleted before proceeding any further, then click on the “Click to view entire list of files which will be deleted” link in the “Delete Plugin” screen …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely In WordPress

All files belonging to the plugin selected for removalwill display on your screen …

Updating And Deleting Plugins

If you are positively sure that you want to proceed and delete the plugin files, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins In Your WordPress Dashboard

The selected plugins and related files will be removed from your WordPress installation …

How To Update And Delete Plugins In The WordPress Admin Dashboard

How To Safely Bulk-Delete WordPress Plugins

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

Important

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 checkbox, or selecting the check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins

Once you have done this, choose Deactivate from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely

Click Apply

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins In WordPress

The selected plugins will be deactivated …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely

To delete all or some of the inactive plugins, go to the “Plugins” area and click on the Inactive link on the main menu …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Inside Your WP Admin Dashboard

Select all of the plugins you want to delete by either placing a tick next to their checkbox, or click on the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select and delete all inactive plugins …

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely From Your WordPress Dashboard

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

Updating And Deleting Plugins From The Dashboard

Click Apply

How To Update And Delete Plugins In Your WordPress Admin Dashboard

A list of all selected plugins will be displayed 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 remove all of the plugins listed …

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely From Your WP Dashboard

All plugins will be deleted …

Updating And Deleting Plugins From Your WordPress Admin Dashboard

Plugin Management – Tools

As well as the methods shown above, you can use other WordPress plugins that let you manage your WordPress 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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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum

Originally published as How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins.