In a separate blog post, we provide a detailed explanation of what WP plugins are about and how you can use these to add new features to your website or blog without editing code.
To view the article, go here:
In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping WordPress plugins up-to-date, how to easily upgrade and remove plugins from your site, and some tools to help you better manage your plugins if you need to manage multiple WordPress sites or blogs.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Many Of Your WordPress Plugins Need Updating
New versions of WordPress are regularly released (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in earlier releases, 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 WordPress plugins every.
The reason for 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 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 very proactive when it comes to making sure that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if this is needed). All you have to do on your end, is just keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is really simple, quick and easy to do.
Keeping your plugins regularly updated and deleting old plugins you no longer use is an essential aspect of good WordPress management and helps to avoid potential errors or problems.
The tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins safely in WordPress without touching web code.
How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely – Tutorial
WordPress provides several methods to alert users when plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can instantly see how many plugins need to be updated as soon as you log into your Admin area simply by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that nine WP plugins are out of date and need updating …
You can also see how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Toolbar (as shown below, several plugins have to be updated) …
The Plugins screen (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you how many plugins need updating …
As well as providing information about which plugins have available updates, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin download sites and gives you the option to update your plugins individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by learning how to upgrade individual plugins.
Upgrade Plugins One At A Time
Always make a complete backup of your site files and database before upgrading your website or blog.
In your admin menu, go to 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 …
(WordPress Plugins Section)
Notes:
If you have too many plugins and would like to reduce the number of plugins showing on your page, 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 up on the screen by default), then click Apply …
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” field …
You will see plugin information in different backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (active vs. inactive and out-of-date vs up-to-date) …
Plugins that need updating show the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] available” …
Find the plugin that needs updating and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides smooth and fast plugin updates, so that updating your plugins happens “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat the above process for any other plugins on your site that need to be updated, or see the section below if you have many plugins that are out-of-date and would like to update them all at the same time.
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Now that you know how to update individual plugins, it’s time to learn how to update many plugins simultaneously.
Bulk-Upgrading WordPress Plugins
To bulk-update WordPress plugins simultaneously from your admin area, go to the “Plugins” section 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 only the plugins you want to upgrade by checking its box …
In the Bulk Actions pull-down menu above the table of plugins, choose Update …
And then click Apply …
Your selected plugins will begin updating …
Once your plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to your Plugins area, or select another option from the dashboard menu …
Once your plugins are all 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) …
You have updated all plugins on your site!
(When plugins on your site are up-to-date, update messages disappear)
Now that you know how to update plugins, let’s take a look at how to delete plugins from your WordPress site.
Deleting WP Plugins
Occasionally, you may decide to remove plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This can help to conserve server resources and also help you avoid potential problems.
In this section, you will learn how to deactivate and delete unused plugins from your WordPress site or blog.
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 reinstall your site.
To delete a plugin, go to your dashboard menu and click on Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins area, find the plugin you want to delete and make sure it is inactive.
Hint: Inactive plugins are listed in 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 continuing with your plugin deletion …
Next, click Delete …
If you would like to browse 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” page …
The entire list of files associated with the plugin selected for removalwill be listed on your screen …
If you are positively certain that you would like to go ahead and delete these plugin, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugin(s) will be deleted …
Bulk-Deleting Plugins
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 check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …
Once you have done this, 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 on your site, go to the “Plugins” page and click on the Inactive link on the main menu …
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 of the plugins that you want to delete, select Delete from the Bulk Actions drop-down menu …
Click Apply …
A list of all selected plugins will be displayed 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 certain that you want to proceed to the next step and remove all of the plugins listed …
All plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
Managing WordPress Plugins
In addition to the methods shown above, you can use 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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