In a separate post, we provide an overview of what plugins are about and how you can use these to easily extend your web site’s capabilities.
You can read this article here:
In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping WordPress plugins up-to-date, how to easily upgrade and delete plugins, and discover useful tools to help you better manage your plugins if you run multiple WordPress sites or blogs.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Many WordPress Plugins Need Upgrading
New versions of WordPress are regularly released (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in previous software versions, and to improve existing features.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, you can expect to see at least some new new update notifications for plugins every.
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 built for a previous version. Whenever this happens, issues can sometimes occur.
Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are very proactive when it comes to making sure that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if updating is required). All you need to do as a website owner, is just maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is very simple and easy to do.
Keeping your WordPress plugins up-to-date and deleting old plugins you no longer use is part of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid any potential problems or errors.
The WordPress tutorial below explains how to update and delete plugins safely in WordPress without web coding skills necessary.
How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins – Tutorial
WordPress has several methods to let you know when plugins on your site need to be updated.
For example, you can instantly see how many plugins are out-of-date from your Site’s Dashboard just by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
In the screenshot below, you can see that nine WordPress plugins need updating …
You can also check how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Toolbar (as shown below, a number of plugins require updating) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also notifies you about plugins that need to be updated …
As well as providing information about which plugins have updates available, the Plugins section 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 update one plugin at a time.
How To Update Single WordPress Plugins
We strongly recommend performing a full backup of your data and files before making any changes to your website.
In your main menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” page will display in your browser. This list of plugins can be quite long depending on the number of plugins you have installed on your site …
(Plugins Page)
Notes:
If you have too many plugins and would like to reduce the number of plugins displaying on the page, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins page and type in a smaller number of items per page (by default, all plugins display on the page), 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” feature …
WordPress displays plugin information in different color backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (inactive vs. active and out-of-date vs up-to-date) …
Plugins in need of upgrading show the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Insert Plugin Name] available” …
Find the plugin that needs updating and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides smooth & simpler plugin updates, so that the process of updating your plugins takes place “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins screen …
Repeat this process for all plugins on your site that need to be updated, or see the section below if you have several plugins that are out-of-date and would like to upgrade them all at once.
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Now that you know how to update plugins individually, let’s show you how to update multiple WP plugins simultaneously.
How To Upgrade Several WordPress Plugins
To update multiple WordPress plugins in one go 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 …
Click the checkbox 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 drop down menu above the table of plugins, select Update …
Click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will automatically begin updating …
Once all plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to your Plugins area, 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 on your screen, toolbar and menus) …
All plugins are now up-to-date!
(When plugins on your site are all up-to-date, notification icons disappear)
Now that you know how to automatically upgrade in the WP dashboard, let’s show you how to remove plugins safely from your WordPress site or blog.
How To Safely Remove WordPress Plugins
It’s a good idea to remove plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This can decrease resources on your server and help to minimize causes of problems.
In this section, we show you how to safely uninstall unused plugins from your WordPress site.
We strongly recommend creating 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 click on Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins section, locate the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is deactivated.
Hint: Inactive plugins have a different background color than active plugins and display an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, click on Deactivate before continuing …
Click on Delete …
If you would like to have a look at all the files that will be deleted before going ahead with the next step, then click on the “Click to view entire list of files which will be deleted” link in the “Delete Plugin” section …
All files belonging to the plugin selected for removalwill display on your screen …
If you are sure that you want to go ahead and delete the plugin files, click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugins and related files will be deleted …
Deleting Multiple Plugins In Bulk
You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins on your site, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be uninstalled.
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 check box, 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 dropdown menu …
Click Apply …
All selected plugins will be deactivated …
Once you have deactivated these plugins, click on the Inactive 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 delete by checking its box …
Once you have selected all the plugins that you want deleted, specify Delete from the Bulk Actions drop down 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 want to proceed to the next step and delete all of the selected plugins …
Your plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
WordPress Management Tools For Plugins
In addition to the methods shown above, you can install WordPress plugins that let 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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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)