How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

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

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely Inside Your DashboardIn a previous article, we explain what plugins are and how you can use these to add new features or functionality to your blog with no coding skills required.

You can read the article here:

In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping all WordPress plugins up-to-date, how to automatically upgrade and uninstall plugins, and discover useful plugin management tips.

How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

Why Some WordPress Plugins Need To Be Regularly Upgraded

WordPress regularly updates its software (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in older releases, 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 notifications for WordPress plugins when new WordPress versions are released.

This is because most WordPress plugins are created by 3rd-party developers, so sometimes the code 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 develop.

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

Info

Keeping your WordPress plugins up-to-date and removing old plugins you no longer need is an essential aspect of good WordPress management and helps to avoid potential conflicts or errors.

The tutorial below explains how to upgrade and delete plugins safely from your WP dashboard without editing web code.

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

WordPress provides a few methods of letting users know when plugins on their blog need to be updated.

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

In the screenshot below, nine WP plugins have older versions that need to be updated …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Safely In Your Dashboard

You can also check how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Admin Toolbar (as shown below, nine plugins have to be updated) …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins

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

Updating And Deleting Plugins

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

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely In WordPress

Let’s start by showing you how to update plugins individually.

How To Upgrade WordPress Plugins One At A Time

Warning

Always make a backup of your site files and database before updating your website or blog.

In your dashboard menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins In The WP Admin Dashboard

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

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins In WordPress

(Plugins Page)

Tip

Tips:

If you have too many plugins 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 up on the page by default), then click the ‘Apply’ button …

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely In WordPress

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

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely From The Dashboard

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

Updating And Deleting Plugins In WordPress

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

How To Automatically Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

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

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

WordPress provides simple plugin updating, so that updating your plugins takes place with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins screen …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins

Repeat this process for any other 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 upgrade them all in one simple operation.

***

Now that you know how to update plugins individually, it’s time to learn how to bulk-upgrade WP plugins.

How To Upgrade Several Plugins Simultaneously

To update multiple WP plugins in one go from your admin area, go to the “Plugins” area and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely In WordPress

Click the check box in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to upgrade by checking its box …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

In the Bulk Actions dropdown menu above the list of plugins, choose Update

Updating And Deleting WordPress Plugins Safely

Click Apply

Updating And Deleting WordPress Plugins In Your WP Admin Dashboard

Your selected plugins will automatically begin to update …

Upgrading And Deleting WordPress Plugins Safely Inside The WordPress Dashboard

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

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely In WordPress

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) …

Updating And Deleting WordPress Plugins Safely Inside Your Dashboard

You have updated all plugins on your site to their latest version!

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Inside The WordPress Admin Dashboard

(When your plugins are up-to-date, update alerts no longer appear)

Now that you know how to automatically update inside your dashboard, let’s show you how to delete plugins from your WordPress blog or website.

How To Safely Delete Plugins

At times, you may choose to remove WordPress plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This can decrease resources on your server and also help to reduce problems.

In this section, you will learn how to remove unused plugins from your site or blog.

Warning

We strongly recommend creating 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 restore your site.

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

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely In WordPress

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

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

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

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

Updating And Deleting Plugins

Next, click Delete

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely In Your WP Dashboard

If you want 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 …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins

The entire list of files associated with the plugin selected for deletionwill be listed on your screen …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins In Your WordPress Admin Dashboard

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

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

Your plugin(s) will be deleted from your server …

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

Bulk-Deleting WordPress Plugins

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

Info

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

Updating And Deleting Plugins

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

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely Inside The WP Admin Dashboard

Click the Apply button …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Safely

Your selected plugins will be deactivated …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Safely From Your Dashboard

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

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Safely

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 …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely Inside Your Dashboard

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

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely Inside Your WP Admin Dashboard

Click Apply

Upgrading And Deleting WordPress Plugins

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

Updating And Deleting WordPress Plugins Safely From The Dashboard

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

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins

Plugin Management – WordPress Tools

In addition to the methods shown above, you can install WordPress plugins to 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.

***

"I love the way your email series "Infinite Web Content Creation Training Series" is documented and presented. It is very absorbing and captivating. The links and tutorials are interesting and educational. This has motivated me to rewrite my content following the concepts I am learning from the email series." - Mani Raju, www.fortuneinewaste.com

Originally published as How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins.