In a previous article, we explain what plugins are and how you can use these to easily increase your web site’s capabilities.
You can view this article here:
In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping all plugins up-to-date, how to update and uninstall plugins from your site, and some great tools to help you better manage your plugins.
Why Many Of Your WordPress Plugins Need Frequent Upgrading
WordPress constantly updates its software (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in earlier releases, and to improve existing features.
Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, you can expect to see at least some new new update notices for plugins each time a new version of WordPress is announced.
This is because most WordPress plugins are created by external developers, so sometimes features in the new WordPress version conflict with plugins that were created and tested to work 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 required). All you need to do on your end, is maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is very simple and easy to do.
Keeping your WordPress plugins regularly updated and deleting old plugins you no longer need is an essential aspect of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid potential conflicts and errors.
The step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins in your WordPress dashboard without requiring web coding skills.
Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Inside Your WP Admin Dashboard – Tutorial
WordPress has a few methods to notify users when plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can instantly see how many plugins are out-of-date from your Admin area simply by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that nine plugins need to be updated …
You can also tell how many plugins need updating from your WP Admin Toolbar (the example below shows that several plugins should be brought up to date) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you what plugins need updating …
In addition to providing information about plugins that have updates available, the Plugins screen provides links to the plugin download pages and gives you the option to update the plugin individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by showing you how to upgrade one WP plugin at a time.
How To Upgrade Single A Plugin
We recommend making a full backup of your site files and database before making any updates to your website.
In your admin menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” area will display in your browser. The table of plugins can flow down your page for a while, depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site …
(WordPress Plugins Section)
Notes:
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 page and enter a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show on the page by default, i.e. “999”), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
Your Plugins page 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 “Search Plugins” feature …
You will see information about plugins in different backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (inactive vs. active and out-of-date vs up-to-date) …
Plugins that require upgrading show the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Insert 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 updating process, so that updating your plugins happens with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat the above process for any other plugins on your site that need updating, or refer to 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 upgrade plugins one at a time, the next step is to learn how to bulk-update plugins.
Bulk-Updating WP Plugins
To update multiple plugins simultaneously directly inside your dashboard, go to the “Plugins” area and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Click on the check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to update by checking its box …
In the Bulk Actions dropdown menu above your plugin list, select Update …
And then click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will begin the update process …
Once all upgrades are completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to your Plugins area, or select another option from the admin menu …
Once your plugins are all 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 have now been upgraded!
(When your site uses the latest version of all plugins, update notices no longer appear)
Now that you know how to automatically upgrade your in the WP dashboard, let’s show you how to remove plugins from your WordPress blog or website.
How To Safely Delete WordPress Plugins
At times, you may choose to remove plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This can decrease resource usage and also help to eliminate causes of problems.
In this section, you will learn how to deactivate and delete unused plugins from your WordPress site or blog.
Always create 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 reinstall your site.
To delete a plugin, go to your admin menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins section, locate the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is inactive.
Hint: Inactive plugins are listed in a different background color than active plugins and show an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, then click on Deactivate before continuing with your plugin deletion …
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 …
The entire list of files belonging to the plugin selected for deletionwill display on your screen …
If you are sure that you want to proceed and delete the plugin files, click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugins and related files will be deleted …
Deleting Multiple Plugins Simultaneously
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 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 checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …
Next, select Deactivate from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …
Click the Apply button …
Your selected plugins will be deactivated …
To delete all or some of the inactive plugins, go to the “Plugins” page and click on the Inactive link in the Plugins menu …
Click on the check box in 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 selected all of the plugins that you want to delete, specify Delete from the Bulk Actions drop-down menu …
Click the Apply button …
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 would like to go ahead and delete all of the selected plugins …
All plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
WordPress Tools For Managing WordPress Plugins
As well as the methods shown above, you can install a number of third-party tools to 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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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum