In another blog post, we provide a detailed explanation of what WordPress plugins are about and how you can use plugins to add new features to your blog with no software programming skills required.
To view this article, go here:
In this tutorial you will learn why plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to easily upgrade and delete your WordPress plugins, and useful plugin management tips if you currently run or manage multiple WordPress sites.
Why Many Plugins Need Upgrading
The WordPress software is regularly updated (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in earlier software 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 WordPress plugins each time a new version of WordPress is released.
The reason for this, is because most plugins for WordPress are created by external developers, so sometimes features in the newly-released WordPress version conflict with plugins that were developed and tested with a previous version. Whenever this happens, there is a potential for issues to sometimes develop.
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 as a website owner, is simply maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is really quick, simple and easy to do.
Keeping your plugins up-to-date and deleting old plugins you no longer use is part of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid errors and problems.
The WordPress tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins inside your WordPress dashboard without touching web code.
How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins – Tutorial
WordPress utilizes a number of different ways to let you know when your plugins need updating.
For example, you can tell immediately how many plugins need to be updated from your Administration panel simply by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, nine WordPress plugins need to be updated …
You can also view how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Admin Toolbar (the example below shows how many plugins need to be updated) …
The Plugins screen (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you how many plugins need updating …
In addition to providing information about which plugins have available updates, the Plugins screen provides links to the plugin developer sites and gives you the option to update the plugin individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by learning how to update one plugin at a time.
How To Update Single Plugins
Always make a full backup of your data and files before making any changes to your blog or website.
In your admin menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
You will be taken to the “Plugins” section. This page can be quite lengthy depending on how many 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 showing on your page, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins area and enter a smaller number of items per page (by default, all plugins display on the screen), then click Apply …
Your Plugins area 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” feature …
You will see information about plugins in different backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (active vs. inactive and outdated vs up-to-date) …
Plugins in need of updating have a distinctive 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 process, so that updating your plugins takes place “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat this process for all plugins on your site that need to be updated, or see the section below if you have a number of plugins that are out-of-date and would like to update them all in one simple operation.
***
Now that you know how to upgrade one plugin at a time, the next step is to learn how to upgrade several WP plugins simultaneously.
How To Bulk-Update Plugins
To upgrade multiple WordPress plugins in one go using the automatic upgrade feature, 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 only the plugins you want to upgrade by checking its box …
In the Bulk Actions pull-down menu at the top of the page, choose Update …
Click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will automatically begin to update …
Once your plugins have all been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to the Plugins section, or select another section of your dashboard …
Once your plugins are all up-to-date, any plugin alerts will 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) …
You have updated all plugins on your site to their latest version!
(When your site uses the latest version of all plugins, notification icons do not display)
Now that you know how to automatically update WP in your admin dashboard, it’s time to learn how to remove plugins from your WordPress blog or website.
How To Remove WordPress Plugins
Occasionally, you may want to delete WordPress plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This helps to reduce resources on your server and helps to eliminate potential problems.
In this section, we show you how to remove unused plugins from your 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 remove a plugin, go to your admin menu and choose Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins area, find the plugin you want to delete 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, click on Deactivate before continuing with your plugin deletion …
Click on Delete …
If you would like to browse all the files that will be deleted before proceeding any further, then click on the “Click to view entire list of files which will be deleted” link in the “Delete Plugin” section …
A complete list of files belonging to the plugin that you are about to remove will be listed on your screen …
If you are certain that you want to go ahead and delete the selected plugin files, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugins and related files will be deleted …
How To Safely Delete Multiple WP Plugins In Bulk
You can delete all inactive plugins at once, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be removed.
Note: To delete any plugins that are currently active, you 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) …
Next, specify Deactivate from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …
Click Apply …
All selected plugins will be deactivated …
To delete all or some of the inactive plugins, 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 checkbox, or click on the check box next to the Plugin column header to select and delete all inactive plugins …
Once you have selected all of the plugins that you want to delete, specify Delete from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …
Click the Apply button …
A list of all selected plugins will be displayed 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 sure that you want to go ahead and remove all of the selected plugins …
Your plugins will be deleted …
WordPress Management Tools For WP Plugins
As well as the methods shown above, you can use other WordPress plugins to 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.
***
"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now