In a previous blog post, we provide a detailed explanation of what WP plugins are about and how you can use these to expand your website’s capabilities.
To view this article, go here:
In this tutorial you will learn why WordPress plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to easily upgrade and remove your WordPress plugins, and some plugin management tools.
Why Many Of Your WordPress Plugins Need To Be Frequently Upgraded
The WordPress software is constantly updated (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in older releases, and to improve existing features.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, there will typically be new new update notifications for plugins when WordPress releases a new version.
This is because most plugins for WordPress are created by third-party developers, so sometimes code in the new WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were built for a previous version. Whenever this happens, there is a potential for issues to sometimes occur.
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 required). All you have to do on your end, is simply keep 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 deleting old plugins you no longer need is an essential aspect of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid any potential problems or errors.
The WordPress tutorial below explains how to update and delete plugins safely without web coding knowledge required.
How To Automatically Update And Delete WordPress Plugins – Tutorial
WordPress employs several methods to inform you when plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can see ‘at a glance’ how many plugins are out-of-date from your WP Dashboard simply by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
In the example below, you can see that 9 WordPress plugins are out of date and need updating …
You can also tell how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Toolbar (as shown below, a number of plugins need updating) …
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 developer pages and gives you the option to update the plugins instantly …
Let’s start by showing you how to upgrade individual WordPress plugins.
Upgrading WordPress Plugins One At A Time
We strongly recommend performing a backup of your data and files before upgrading your blog or website.
From your main menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” section will display in your browser. This screen can be quite lengthy depending on the number of plugins you have installed on your blog …
(Plugins Section)
Useful Tips:
If you have too many plugins and would like to reduce the number of plugins displaying on the screen, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins page and type in a smaller number of items per page (by default, all plugins display on the page), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
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” feature …
You will see plugin information in different backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (active vs. inactive and out-of-date vs up-to-date) …
Plugins in need of updating have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin Name] available” …
Locate 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 area …
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 upgrade all plugins in one simple operation.
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Now that you know how to update one WP plugin at a time, the next step is to learn how to bulk-upgrade plugins.
Bulk-Updating WP Plugins
To update multiple WP plugins simultaneously 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 …
Click on the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to update by checking their individual boxes …
In the Bulk Actions pull-down menu at the top of the page, select Update …
Click Apply …
Your selected plugins will begin updating …
Once your plugins have all been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to the Plugins area, or select another option from the sidebar menu …
Once your plugins are all up-to-date, the update reminders disappear (i.e. the “at-a-glance” indicators and “There is a new version of XYZ plugin available” notices no longer display on your screen, toolbar and menus) …
All plugins have now been upgraded to their latest versions!
(When your site or blog uses the latest version of all plugins, the notification icons disappear)
Now that you know how to upgrade in your dashboard, let’s take a look at how to remove plugins from your WordPress blog or website.
Deleting Plugins
Occasionally, you may choose to delete plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This can help decrease resources on your server and help you avoid causes of some problems.
In this section, you will learn how to delete unused plugins from your site or blog.
Always create 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 delete a plugin, go to your WP admin menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins area, find the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is inactive.
Hint: Inactive plugins have a different colored background than active plugins and show an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, then click on Deactivate before continuing …
Next, click Delete …
If you want to have a look at 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” section …
All files belonging to the plugin that you are about to delete will display on your screen …
If you are sure that you would like to go ahead and delete these plugin files, click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugins and related files will be deleted …
Deleting Multiple WordPress Plugins Simultaneously
You can delete all inactive plugins at once, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be deleted.
Note: To delete any plugins that are currently 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) …
Next, specify Deactivate from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …
Click the Apply button …
All selected plugins will be deactivated …
To delete all or some of the inactive plugins, go to the “Plugins” section and click on the Inactive link in the Plugins menu …
Click the check box 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 deleted, select Delete from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …
Click the Apply button …
A list of all selected plugins will display in the Delete Plugins screen. 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 would like to go ahead and remove all of the selected plugins …
Your plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
Managing Plugins
As well as the methods shown above, you can use WordPress plugins that let you manage your WordPress 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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