In another article, we explain what plugins are and how you can use plugins to add new features or functionality to your web site with no software programming knowledge required.
You can read the article here:
In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping all WordPress plugins up-to-date, how to automatically upgrade and uninstall your WordPress plugins, and some tools to help you better manage your plugins.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Some Plugins Need To Be Regularly Upgraded
New versions of WordPress are frequently being released (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in previous software versions, and to improve existing features.
Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, there will typically be new new update notices for WordPress plugins every.
This is because most WordPress plugins are created by third-party developers, so sometimes code in the newly-released WordPress version conflict with plugins that were developed for 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 very proactive when it comes to making sure that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if updating is needed). All you need to do on your end, is maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is really easy and simple to do.
Keeping your plugins up-to-date and removing old plugins you no longer use is part of good WordPress management and helps to avoid any potential problems or errors.
The WordPress step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins safely without web programming knowledge required.
How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely In WordPress – Tutorial
WordPress uses a number of different ways to alert you when plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can tell immediately how many plugins are out-of-date as soon as you log into your Administration panel simply by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, 9 WP plugins are out of date and need to be updated …
You can also tell how many plugins need updating from your WP Notification Toolbar (as shown below, several plugins should be brought up to date) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you which plugins need updating …
In addition to providing information about plugins that have updates available, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin download pages and gives you the option to update your plugins with one-click …
Let’s start by showing you how to upgrade individual WP plugins.
Update Individual A Plugin
Always make a full backup of your data and files before making any upgrades to your website.
From your admin menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” screen will display in your browser. This table of plugins can be quite lengthy depending on how many plugins you have installed in your blog …
(Plugins Screen)
Useful Info:
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 screen and enter a smaller number of items per page (by default, all plugins display on the screen), then click Apply …
Your Plugins page will now be made more manageable with a ’numbered pages’ feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search Installed Plugins” field …
WordPress displays information about plugins in different color backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (active vs. inactive and up-to-date vs. out-of-date) …
Plugins in need of upgrading have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] available” …
Select the plugin that needs updating and click on the update now link …
WordPress has done away with the loading screen when updating plugins and streamlined the process, so that updating your plugins takes place “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins screen …
Repeat this process for any other plugins on your site that need to be updated, or refer to the section below if you have several 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 upgrade individual plugins, the next step is to learn how to upgrade multiple WordPress plugins simultaneously.
How To Upgrade Several WP Plugins Simultaneously
To bulk-upgrade plugins 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 …
Tick 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 …
In the Bulk Actions dropdown menu above your plugin table, select Update …
Click Apply …
Your selected plugins will begin updating …
Once the update process has been completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to your Plugins screen, or select another option from the WordPress admin menu …
Once all plugins are 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 on your screen, toolbar and menus) …
All plugins are now up-to-date!
(When your site uses the latest version of all plugins, update messages no longer display)
Now that you know how to automatically upgrade WordPress in your dashboard, let’s take a look at how to safely uninstall plugins safely from your WordPress site.
Deleting WP Plugins
At times, you may want to remove WordPress plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This can help conserve resource usage and also helps to eliminate problems.
In this section, we show you how to safely remove unused plugins from your WordPress site or blog.
Always create 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 remove a plugin, go to your dashboard menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins area, find the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is deactivated.
Hint: Inactive plugins appear in a different colored background than active plugins and show an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, click on Deactivate before proceeding …
Next, click Delete …
If you would like to review a list of all the files that will be deleted before taking the next step, then click on the “Click to view entire list of files which will be deleted” link in the “Delete Plugin” page …
The entire list of files belonging to the plugin that you are about to remove will display on your screen …
If you are absolutely sure about going ahead and deleting these plugin files, click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugins and related files will be removed from your server …
How To Safely Bulk-Delete WP Plugins
You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be removed.
Note: To delete any plugins that are presently active, your will first need to 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, specify Deactivate from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …
Click the Apply button …
Your selected plugins will be deactivated …
To delete all or some of the inactive plugins on your site, go to the “Plugins” section and click on the Inactive link on the main menu …
Click the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to delete by checking their individual boxes …
Once you have ticked all the check boxes next to the plugins that you want to delete, specify Delete from the Bulk Actions drop 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 selected plugins …
All plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
WordPress Tools For Managing WordPress Plugins
As well as the methods shown above, you can use a range of tools 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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