Managing Plugins comes in handy quite often. You can activate, deactivate, update, and delete plugins as you need to. The steps below will show you how you can manage your plugins in your WordPress dashboard.

1. Log in to your WordPress dashboard.

2. Once you are inside your dashboard, click the link titled “Plugins” in the menu on the left hand side.

3. Once you click the “Plugins” link a drop down menu of three more links will be revealed (Installed Plugins, Add New, Editor). Click “Installed Plugins”. This will bring up a page of all the plugins that you have installed. Some plugins may be activated, some might not be activated, it is just a list of every plugin that is installed. Below is an example of what this page would look like (yours may differ depending on what plugins you have installed, also note my plugin descriptions are cut off for the sake of a slimmer image).

The “Installed Plugins” page is where you will manage your plugins. Anytime you want to active, deactivate, or delete plugins, this is where you will do it.

How to manage the plugins

In the image below you can see differences in activated and deactivated plugins. The links underneath the title change depending on the activation.

For activated plugins in your list you are given three link options underneath the plugin title:

• Settings – A plugins settings are options for the plugin where you can customize the plugin to fit your websites needs. These are different for every plugin. You will just have to go in to the settings and look around. Reading the plugin documentation will go into detail about the plugins settings.
• Deactivate – This will “Turn Off” the plug in but keep the plug in installed (incase you want to keep it for future use).
• Edit – If you know PHP and want to edit or modify one of your plugins to suit your needs even more specifically you can. Most WordPress users probably don’t usually edit there plug in. If you go into the code of a plugin and not know what your doing then you can really mess your plug in up. I would recommend getting really familiar with PHP coding before diving into editing your plugins (I do encourage you to learn PHP! It’s awesome).

For deactivated plugins in your list you are given three link options underneath the plugin title:

• Activate – Clicking this will activate the plugin (turn it on) so it will be available for use with your website.
• Edit – This is the same as the editing explanation for activated plugins.
• Delete – This will delete the plugin completely. This will uninstall it from your website. If you want the plugin back you will have to reinstall it from the “Add New” link under “Plugins” in the dashboard.

Related Tutorials:
Installing Plugins in WordPress
Activating PLugins in WordPress