In a separate post, we provide an overview of what plugins are about and how you can use these to easily extend your website’s functionality.
You can read the article here:
In this tutorial you will learn why WordPress plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to safely upgrade and uninstall your WordPress plugins, and discover some tips to help you better manage your plugins.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Some Of Your Plugins Need Frequent Upgrading
New versions of WordPress are regularly released (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in earlier releases, as well as to improve existing features.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, there will typically be new new update notifications for plugins each time a new WordPress version is released.
The reason for this, is because most plugins for WordPress are created by external developers, so sometimes code in the new 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 making sure that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if updating is required). All you need to do as a website owner, is simply keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is really easy to do.
Keeping your plugins up-to-date and deleting old plugins you no longer use is an essential aspect of good WordPress management and helps to avoid conflicts and errors.
The WordPress tutorial below explains how to update and delete plugins in WordPress with no coding skills required.
How To Update And Delete Plugins In Your WP Dashboard – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress has several methods to let users know when plugins on their blog need to be updated.
For example, you can see how many plugins are out-of-date as soon as you log into your Admin area just by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that nine WP plugins are out of date and need to be updated …
You can also see how many plugins need to be updated from your WordPress Toolbar (as shown below, nine plugins require updating) …
The Plugins screen (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you how many plugins need to be updated …
In addition to providing information about plugins that have updates available, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin developer sites and gives you the option to update your plugin with one-click …
Let’s start by showing you how to upgrade one WordPress plugin at a time.
Updating WordPress Plugins One At A Time
Always make a complete backup of your data and files before upgrading your blog or website.
From your main menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” section will display in your browser. The screen can be quite lengthy depending on the number of plugins you have added to your blog …
(The WordPress Plugins Screen)
Additional Information:
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 type in a smaller number of items per page (by default, all plugins display on the screen), then click Apply …
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 “Search Plugins” feature …
WordPress displays 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 show the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] available” …
Find the plugin that needs to be updated and click on the update now link …
WordPress has done away with the loading screen when updating plugins and streamlined the plugin update process, so that the process of updating your plugins takes place with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins screen …
Repeat the above process for all 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 update all plugins in bulk.
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Now that you know how to update individual plugins, the next step is to learn how to bulk-update plugins.
How To Bulk-Update WP Plugins
To update multiple plugins at the same time from your admin area, go to the “Plugins” screen and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Click the check box in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to upgrade by checking its box …
In the Bulk Actions drop down menu above the table of plugins, select Update …
And then click Apply …
Your selected plugins will automatically begin to update …
Once all updates have completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to the Plugins screen, or select another section of your dashboard …
Once all plugins are up-to-date, the plugin notifications will disappear (i.e. the “at-a-glance” indicators and “There is a new version of XYZ plugin available” notices no longer display) …
You have updated all plugins on your site!
(When your site uses the latest version of all plugins, notification icons do not display)
Now that you know how to upgrade your inside your admin dashboard, let’s take a look at how to uninstall plugins from your WordPress site.
How To Safely Remove WP Plugins
As part of smart WordPress site management, it’s a good idea to uninstall inactive plugins. This can help to decrease resources on your server and also eliminate problems.
In this section, you will learn how to safely uninstall unused plugins from your WordPress site or blog.
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 WP admin menu and choose Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins section, find the plugin you want to delete and make sure it is deactivated.
Hint: Inactive plugins have a different background color than active plugins and show an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, then click on Deactivate before proceeding …
Next, click Delete …
If you would like to browse 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” page …
All files belonging to the plugin that you are about to remove will be listed on your screen …
If you are positively sure that you would like to go ahead and delete the selected plugin files, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugins and related files will be removed from your WordPress installation …
Deleting Multiple WordPress Plugins In Bulk
You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins on your site, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be uninstalled.
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) …
Once you have done this, select Deactivate from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …
Click the Apply button …
The selected plugins will be deactivated …
To delete all or some of the inactive plugins, go to the “Plugins” screen and click on the Inactive link on the main menu …
Select all of the plugins you want to delete by either placing a tick next to their check box, or click on the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select and delete all inactive plugins …
Once you have selected all of the plugins that you want to delete, choose Delete from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …
Click the Apply button …
A list of all selected plugins will display 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 remove all of the plugins listed …
The plugins will be deleted …
Useful Management Tools For WordPress Plugins
In addition to the methods shown above, you can use WordPress plugins to manage your 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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