In another post, we provide an overview of what WordPress plugins are all about and how you can use these to enhance your web site’s functionality.
To read the article, go here:
In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn why plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to easily upgrade and uninstall plugins from your site, and useful tools to help you better manage your plugins.
Why Many WordPress Plugins Need Updating
WordPress frequently updates its software (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in previous software versions, as well as to improve existing features.
Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, you can expect to see at least some new updates for plugins when new versions of WordPress are announced.
The reason for this, is because most plugins for WordPress are created by 3rd-party developers, so sometimes the code in the newly-released WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were created and tested to work with a previous version. When this happens, issues can sometimes develop.
Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are quite proactive when it comes to ensuring that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if updating is needed). All you need to do on your end, is maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is really simple and easy to do.
Keeping your plugins up-to-date and deleting old plugins you no longer need is an essential aspect of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid potential conflicts or errors.
The WordPress tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins without touching web code.
Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely From Your Dashboard – Tutorial
WordPress provides several ways to notify you when plugins need updating.
For example, you can immediately see how many plugins need to be updated as soon as you log into your Administration panel simply by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, nine plugins have older versions that need updating …
You can also tell how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Admin Toolbar (in the screenshot below, you can again see that 9 plugins should be updated) …
The Plugins screen (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also provides information about plugins that need to be updated …
In addition to providing information about plugins that have available updates, the Plugins screen provides links to the plugin download pages and gives you the option to update your plugin individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by learning how to update one WordPress plugin at a time.
Update Plugins Individually
Always make a full backup of your website before upgrading your website or blog.
In your admin menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” section will display in your browser. This list of plugins can be quite long depending on the number of plugins you have added to your blog …
(The WordPress Plugins Section)
Notes:
If you have too many plugins installed and would like to make this section more manageable, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins area and type in a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show on the page by default, i.e. “999”), then click Apply …
Your Plugins section will now be reduced in size with a page scrolling feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search” feature …
WordPress displays information about plugins in different color backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (active vs. inactive and up-to-date vs. outdated) …
Plugins that need updating have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] available” …
Find 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 plugin updating process, so that the process of updating your plugins happens with just “one click” 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 many 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 upgrade plugins one at a time, the next step is to learn how to bulk-update plugins.
Bulk-Updating WP Plugins
To bulk-upgrade WordPress plugins simultaneously from your admin area, go to the “Plugins” page and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Tick the check box in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to update by checking their individual boxes …
In the Bulk Actions drop-down menu above the list of plugins, choose Update …
And then click Apply …
Your selected plugins will begin to update automatically …
Once all updates have completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to your Plugins section, or choose another option from the admin menu …
Once all plugins are 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) …
All plugins are now up-to-date!
(When your site uses the latest version of all plugins, update notices no longer show)
Now that you know how to automatically update your inside your admin dashboard, let’s show you how to remove plugins safely from your WordPress site or blog.
How To Delete Plugins
Occasionally, you may choose to remove WordPress plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This helps to reduce server resources and helps to eliminate problems.
In this section, you will learn how to safely deactivate and delete unused plugins from your WordPress blog or site.
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 restore your site.
To remove a plugin, go to your main menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins page, find the plugin you want to delete and make sure it is deactivated.
Hint: Inactive plugins use a different background color than active plugins and show an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, click on Deactivate before proceeding …
Click on Delete …
If you need to review a list of 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 …
A complete list of files associated with the plugin that you are about to remove will display on your screen …
If you are absolutely sure that you want to proceed and delete the selected plugin files, click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugins and related files will be deleted from your server …
How To Delete Multiple WordPress Plugins Simultaneously
You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be cleared.
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, choose Deactivate from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …
Click the Apply button …
The 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 …
Tick the checkbox in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to remove by checking its box …
Once you have ticked all the check boxes next to the plugins that you want to delete, choose Delete from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …
Click the Apply button …
A list of all selected plugins will display 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 sure that you want to proceed to the next step and delete all of the plugins listed …
Your plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
Managing WP Plugins – Useful Tools
As well as the methods shown above, you can install a number of third-party tools 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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