In another blog post, we provide an overview of what plugins are about and how you can use these to easily extend your site’s capabilities.
You can view the article here:
In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn why WordPress plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to upgrade and delete plugins, and discover some great plugin management tips.
Why Some Of Your WordPress Plugins Need To Be Frequently Updated
New WordPress versions are regularly released (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in older releases, and to improve existing features or introduce new functionality to users.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, you can expect to see at least some new updates for WordPress plugins each time a new WordPress version is released.
This is because most WordPress plugins are created by third-party developers, so sometimes code in the newly-released WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were developed for a previous version. When this happens, conflicts can 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 on your end, is simply keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is really simple and easy to do.
Keeping your WordPress plugins up-to-date and removing old plugins you no longer need is part of good WordPress management and helps to avoid any potential errors or conflicts.
The step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins safely without requiring web coding or programming skills.
How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely In The WP Admin Dashboard – Tutorial
WordPress has a number of different methods to alert users when plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can see ‘at a glance’ how many plugins are out-of-date from your Site’s Dashboard just by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
In the screenshot below, 9 WordPress plugins have older versions that need updating …
You can also see how many plugins need to be updated from your WordPress Administration Toolbar (as shown below, 9 plugins require updating) …
The Plugins page (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you what plugins need to be updated …
As well as providing information about plugins that have updates available, the Plugins page provides links to the plugin download sites and gives you the option to update the plugin individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by showing you how to upgrade individual plugins.
Upgrading Single Plugins
Always make a backup of your data and files before upgrading your website.
From your WP admin menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” section will display in your browser. The table of plugins can run down your screen for some length, depending on how many plugins you have added to your blog …
(Plugins Section)
Useful Tips:
If you have too many plugins 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 (all plugins show up on the page by default), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
Your Plugins section 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” box …
You will see information about plugins in different backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (active vs. inactive and up-to-date vs. outdated) …
Plugins in need of updating have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] available” …
Select the plugin that you want to update 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 the above process for all plugins on your site that need updating, or see the section below if you have several plugins that are out-of-date and would like to update all plugins at the same time.
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Now that you know how to update one WordPress plugin at a time, let’s show you how to bulk-upgrade plugins.
How To Update Multiple Plugins Simultaneously
To bulk-upgrade WP plugins simultaneously 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 …
Click the check box 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 pull-down menu above the plugin list, choose Update …
Click Apply …
Your selected plugins will begin updating …
After all plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to the Plugins area, or choose a different section of your dashboard …
Once all plugins are up-to-date, any plugin alerts 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 plugins on your site are all up-to-date, update messages no longer display)
Now that you know how to upgrade plugins, let’s take a look at how to safely remove plugins from your blog or website.
Deleting Plugins
As part of good site management, it’s a good idea to uninstall inactive plugins. This helps to reduce resources on your server and will help you avoid potential problems.
In this section, you will learn how to safely remove unused plugins from your site.
We strongly recommend creating 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 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 appear in 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 proceeding with your plugin deletion …
Next, click on Delete …
If you need to have a look at all the files that will be deleted before proceeding, then click on the “Click to view entire list of files which will be deleted” link in the “Delete Plugin” screen …
All files belonging to the plugin selected for deletionwill be listed on your screen …
If you are absolutely sure about going ahead and deleting the plugin files, click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugins and related files will be deleted …
Bulk-Deleting 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 Apply …
Your selected plugins will be deactivated …
Once you have deactivated your plugins, click on the Inactive link on the menu at the top of the page …
Select all of the plugins you want to delete by either placing a tick next to their checkbox, or click on the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select and delete all inactive plugins …
Once you have selected all the plugins that you want deleted, specify 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 absolutely sure that you would like to proceed to the next step and remove all of the plugins listed …
The plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
Plugin Management – WordPress Tools
As well as the methods shown above, you can use a range of third-party tools that help 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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