In a previous article, we explain what plugins are and how you can use these to easily increase your site’s capabilities.
You can read this article here:
In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping all plugins up-to-date, how to safely upgrade and delete your WordPress plugins, and some plugin management tools.
Why Some Of Your Plugins Need To Be Updated
New WordPress versions are constantly being released (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in older software versions, as well as to improve existing features or introduce new functionality to WordPress users.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, there will typically be new new update notices for WordPress plugins every.
This is because most WordPress plugins are created by 3rd-party developers, so sometimes code in the new WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were built for a previous version. When this happens, there is a potential for problems to sometimes occur.
Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are fairly proactive when it comes to ensuring that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if updating is needed). All you have to do on your end, is maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is very simple to do.
Keeping your WordPress plugins up-to-date and removing old plugins you no longer use is an essential aspect of good WordPress management and helps to avoid potential errors or problems.
The step-by-step tutorial below explains how to update and delete WordPress plugins safely inside your dashboard without requiring web coding or programming skills or knowledge.
How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins – Tutorial
WordPress has a number of different ways to alert you when plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can instantly see how many plugins need updating as soon as you log into your WordPress Dashboard simply by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, 9 WP plugins need to be updated …
You can also view how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Toolbar (as shown below, several plugins should be updated) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also provides information about plugins that need updating …
As well as providing information about which plugins have updates available, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin developer sites and gives you the option to update your plugins instantly …
Let’s start by showing you how to upgrade individual WP plugins.
Upgrade Individual A Plugin
Always make a complete backup of your website before making any updates to your blog or website.
From your dashboard menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” area will display in your browser. The table of plugins can run down your page for a while, depending on the number of plugins you have added to your blog …
(Plugins Screen)
Useful Info:
If you have too many plugins installed and would like to reduce the number of plugins showing on the page, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins page and enter a smaller number of items per page (by default, all plugins display on the page), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
Your Plugins page will now be reduced in size with a ’numbered pages’ feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search Installed Plugins” feature …
You will see information about plugins in different color backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (inactive vs. active and outdated vs up-to-date) …
Plugins in need of updating display the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin Name] 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 updating your plugins takes place “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins screen …
Repeat the above process for any other plugins on your site that need to be updated, or see the section below if you have many plugins that are out-of-date and would like to upgrade them all in one simple operation.
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Now that you know how to update individual plugins, let’s show you how to upgrade many plugins simultaneously.
How To Upgrade Multiple WP Plugins Simultaneously
To bulk-upgrade WordPress plugins directly inside your dashboard, go to the “Plugins” page 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 each plugin you want to update by checking its box …
In the Bulk Actions dropdown menu above your plugin table, choose Update …
Click Apply …
Your selected plugins will automatically begin to update …
Once all plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to the Plugins section, or select another option from the main menu …
Once all plugins are up-to-date, the plugin notifications disappear (i.e. the “at-a-glance” indicators and “There is a new version of XYZ plugin available” notices no longer display) …
All plugins are now up-to-date!
(When your site or blog uses the latest version of all plugins, the notification icons no longer show)
Now that you know how to automatically update your plugins, let’s show you how to safely remove plugins safely from your WordPress site.
Deleting Plugins
Occasionally, you may decide to delete WP plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This reduces resources on your server and help to eliminate causes of problems.
In this section, we show you how to deactivate and delete unused plugins from your WordPress blog or site.
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 dashboard menu and click on Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins page, 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 display an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, then click on Deactivate before going any further …
Once you have deactivated the plugin, click Delete …
If you would like to review a list of 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” page …
The entire list of files belonging to the plugin that you are about to delete will display on your screen …
If you are positively certain about going ahead and deleting the 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 Delete Multiple Plugins Simultaneously
You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins on your site, 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 checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …
Once you have done this, choose Deactivate from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …
Click Apply …
The selected plugins will be deactivated …
To delete all or some of the inactive plugins on your site, go to the “Plugins” screen and click on the Inactive link in the Plugins menu …
Select all of the plugins you want to delete by either placing a tick next to their check box, or click on the check box next to the Plugin column header to select and delete all inactive plugins …
Once you have ticked all the check boxes next to the plugins that you want to delete, choose Delete from the Bulk Actions dropdown 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 sure that you want to go ahead and delete all of the selected plugins …
All plugins will be deleted …
Managing Plugins
As well as the methods shown above, you can use a number of tools that let you 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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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group