Are you looking for an easy way to bulk install your favorite plugins in WordPress?
If you frequently create new WordPress sites, then you likely have a list of must-have plugins which you install on every website that you create.
In this article, we will show you how to easily bulk install your favorite plugins in WordPress step by step.
Why Bulk Install WordPress Plugins?
There are more than 59,000+ plugins available in the free WordPress.org directory alone. However, most users stick to a set of must have WordPress plugins that they install on each new website.
By default, WordPress allows you to install one plugin at a time. Manually installing multiple plugins, one by one, can take a few extra minutes. This can become annoying if you do it quite often.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could quickly install all your favorite WordPress plugins at once?
With the right WordPress plugin, you can easily bulk install a set of plugins on any WordPress blog with ease. It helps save time, and you won’t have to perform the tediously repetitive task of installing and activating each plugin one by one.
That said, let’s see how you can bulk install all your favorite plugins in one go.
Creating a Bulk WordPress Plugin Collection
Before you bulk install WordPress plugins, you’ll first need to create a collection of plugins on a website. Basically, you’ll be taking a ‘snapshot’ of all the plugins installed on this site, so you can recreate the same exact setup on any other website.
The best way to do that is by using the WP Reset plugin. It allows you to install multiple plugins and themes with 1 click. Plus, you can use the plugin for quickly recovering and resetting your WordPress site in case anything breaks.
For this tutorial, we’ll use the WP Reset Pro version because it includes the bulk install feature. There is also a free version of WP Reset you use to try the plugin.
First, you’ll need to install and activate the plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you can go to Tools » WP Reset PRO from your WordPress dashboard.
Next, enter the license key and then click the ‘Save & Activate License’ button. You can easily find the license key in the WP Reset account area.
After that, an onboarding popup window will appear. In the onboarding, the plugin will create a test snapshot of your site and set up emergency scripts to recover everything in case something goes wrong.
Go ahead and click the ‘Start onboarding’ button and follow the onscreen instructions.
After that, the onboarding wizard will ask whether to automatically create snapshots of your site before running the WP Reset tools and manipulating plugins and themes.
You can click on the toggles to switch them to ‘ON’ and then click the ‘Next – configure Emergency Recovery Script’ button.
In the next step, the onboarding wizard will require you to install an emergency recovery script.
This helps recover and restore your website from a previous date in case something break and you can’t login to your website.
Go ahead and click the ‘Yes, install the script now’ button.
We recommend noting down the password and the URL in a note file or password manager. This way, you can access your website when you can’t access the admin login.
Simply click the ‘Finish’ button to close the wizard.
Next, you can head to the ‘Collections’ tab in the WP Reset plugin.
From here, simply click the ‘Create Your First Collection’ button.
After that, you’ll need to enter a name for your plugin collection.
Once you’ve entered a name, click the ‘Add new collection’ button.
On the next screen, you can upload plugins to your collection.
Go ahead and click the ‘Add a plugin from the WP repository or a ZIP archive’ link.
Now, WP Reset will give you 2 options to upload plugins to your collection. Let’s take a look at both methods.
Add WordPress Plugins from WP Repository
First, you can set the Type to ‘Plugin’ and search for a plugin in the WordPress.org repository.
Simply enter the plugin URL in the ‘Slug’ field and select the plugin from the dropdown menu.
After that, click the ‘Add new item’ button.
Add WordPress Plugins ZIP Files from Your Computer
Second, you can upload the plugin ZIP files from your computer.
Go ahead and click the ‘Source’ toggle to switch to ‘ZIP file.’ Then click the ‘Choose File’ button and upload the ZIP file.
When you’re done, click the ‘Add new item’ button.
Do note that if you select the ‘ZIP File’ method to upload plugins, you’ll need to first enable cloud service in WP Reset.
To do that, simply go to the ‘Settings’ tab and click the ‘Cloud service’ dropdown menu to select a storage option. The plugin supports WP Reset Cloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, and pCloud.
After you’ve added plugins, you can view them in the Collections tab.
To add more plugins to your list, simply click the ‘Add new plugin or theme’ button and repeat the steps.
Installing Bulk WordPress Plugins on Your Site
The next step is to bulk install your WordPress plugins on another website.
To start, you’ll first need to install and activate the WP Reset Pro plugin on the website you want to bulk install WordPress plugins. For more details, please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you can head to Tools » WP Reset PRO from your WordPress dashboard and enter your license key. Don’t forget to click the ‘Save & Activate License’ button.
Next, you will see the onboarding wizard popup. Simply follow the onscreen instructions to set up an emergency recovery script and enable other options.
After that, you can go to the ‘Collections’ tab in the WP Reset plugin.
You should now see the collection you created earlier.
To bulk install and activate the plugins in your collection, simply click the ‘Install collection’ dropdown menu and select the ‘Install & activate collection’ option.
There are other options as well, like simply installing the plugins or deleting installed plugins and themes then installing and activating the collection.
Once you install and activate a collection, a popup will appear showing you the progress.
You can click the ‘OK’ button when all the plugins have been installed and activated.
After that, you can see your installed plugins by going to the Plugins » Installed Plugins page from your dashboard.
Now you can start configuring your plugin settings and other configurations on your website.
We hope this article helped you learn how to bulk install plugins in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to speed up WordPress and improve your WordPress security.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Akanja says
Nice article
WPBeginner Support says
Thank you
Admin
Juan Furlan says
What a shame. The plugin seems to be abandoned.
Editorial Staff says
We updated the article with a new solution
Admin
Juan Furlan says
Thanks for this article.
I was looking for this solution for a long time.
Julian M. says
I prefer to use the command line and wp tool. For instance:
> wp plugin install akismet –activate
This will install and activate the add-in. Very handy to install plugins in bulk via SSH. You can prepare the list of plugins in a text file and then process all at once.
Kurt says
Unless you are just wanting to let us know that you know of a different way, would you mind giving more details? What is wp tool, and is the command run in root? It would be great to be able to install plugins on all domains on a sever at once.
thanks
Yao Daniel says
Hi bro!
Many thanks for this great idea.
Is it possible to bulk install premium plugins as well?
If yes, how can I get it.
Thanks again and stay blessed.
Editorial Staff says
Yes with the new plugin that we mentioned above, it lets you install premium and custom plugins
Admin
Hardeep Asrani says
That’s be a great idea for client websites.
Hardeep Asrani says
There should be an option to edit comments within 5 minutes, lol.
** That would be
Barbara says
I’ve been using Plugin Central to do this for a few years. It doesn’t have the option to save a profile like this plugin does, but I just keep a list of my favorites in a text document and copy the list whenever I do an install. It does, however, have the option to activate all the plugins after installation.
* And, yes, Floating Social Bar is on my list of favorite plugins to install!
Naser says
Thank you so much for the alternative Barbara. The Bulk Install Profiles plugin was giving me a hard time now and then. Plugin Central works like a charm.
Zimbrul says
That’s brilliant! I can say I’ve got core plugins I install on every site such as Yoast’s WordPress SEO or SEO Images, database management plugins, sitemap plugin, etc.
I think this WP Install Profiles plugin comes handy.
Nuno says
Hello!
Great post and very helpful.
Could one desable the plugin after install the plugins?
Thanks!
Regards,
Nuno
WPBeginner Support says
Nuno, this plugin will only help you install the plugins, it will not auto activate them. You will have to go to Plugins screen and check all plugins and then use Activate from Bulk Actions and apply. To disable plugins you can deactivate them one by one, or bulk deactivate them.
Admin