In another blog post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use plugins to enhance your website’s capabilities.
To view this article, go here:
In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping your WordPress plugins up-to-date, how to easily update and delete plugins, and practical plugin management tips if you need to own or manage multiple WordPress sites or blogs.
Why Your WordPress Plugins Need Frequent Updating
New WordPress versions are regularly released (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in earlier releases, and to improve existing features or introduce new ones.
Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, you can expect to see at least some new new update notifications for WordPress plugins when new WordPress versions are released.
The reason for this, is because most WordPress plugins are created by third-party developers, so sometimes the code in the newly-released WordPress version conflict with plugins that were created and tested to work with 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 needed). All you need to do on your end, is just keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is very simple, quick and easy to do.
Keeping your plugins regularly updated and deleting old plugins you no longer need is part of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid any conflicts or errors.
The step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins safely without requiring web coding skills or knowledge.
How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete WordPress Plugins Safely In The Dashboard – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress employs several ways to alert users when plugins need updating.
For example, you can instantly see how many plugins are out-of-date inside your Admin area simply by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
In the example below, you can see that 9 WordPress plugins need updating …
You can also check how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Notification Toolbar (the example below shows that a number of plugins should be brought up to date) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also notifies you about plugins that need updating …
In addition to providing information about which plugins have available updates, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin download pages and gives you the option to update your plugins individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by learning how to upgrade one plugin at a time.
Upgrade Individual WordPress Plugins
We recommend making a full backup of your site files and database before making any updates to your blog or website.
In your admin menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” area will display in your browser. The list of plugins can be quite lengthy depending on the number of plugins you have added to your blog …
(Plugins Screen)
Notes:
If you have too many plugins installed and would like to reduce the number of plugins displayed on the page, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins area and enter a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show up on the page by default), then click Apply …
Your Plugins area will now be made more manageable with a pagination feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Plugin Search” field …
WordPress displays plugin information in different color backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (inactive vs. active and up-to-date vs. outdated) …
Plugins that require updating have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin Name] available” …
Locate the plugin that needs to be updated and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides streamlined plugin updates, so that updating your plugins takes place “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins screen …
Repeat this process for all plugins on your site that need updating, 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.
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Now that you know how to update plugins individually, it’s time to learn how to upgrade many plugins simultaneously.
How To Bulk-Update Plugins
To bulk-upgrade plugins simultaneously using the automatic update 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 next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to upgrade by checking its box …
In the Bulk Actions pull-down menu at the top of the page, choose Update …
And then click Apply …
Your selected plugins will begin to update automatically …
Once your plugins have all been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to your Plugins screen, or choose another option from the main menu …
Once your plugins are all up-to-date, the plugin notifications 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) …
You have updated all plugins on your site to their latest version!
(When your site uses the latest version of all plugins, the notification icons no longer display)
Now that you know how to update your plugins, let’s show you how to uninstall plugins safely from your blog or website.
Deleting WP Plugins
At times, you may want to delete plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This decreases resources on your server and also will help you avoid problems.
In this section, you will learn how to safely 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 choose Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins area, find the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is inactive.
Hint: Inactive plugins use 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 with your plugin deletion …
Next, click Delete …
If you would like to have a look at 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” page …
All files belonging to the plugin that you are about to remove will display on your screen …
If you are certain about going ahead and deleting these plugin, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugins and related files will be deleted …
Deleting Multiple WP Plugins At Once
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 presently 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 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 pull-down 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” area and click on the Inactive link on the main 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 the plugins that you want deleted, select Delete from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …
Click Apply …
A list of all selected plugins will be displayed 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 sure that you want to proceed to the next step and delete all of the selected plugins …
The plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
Plugin Management – WordPress Tools
In addition to the methods shown above, you can install 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.
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