In a separate 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 with no software programming skills required.
To read the article, go here:
In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn why WordPress plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to easily upgrade and delete plugins from your site, and discover some great tips to help you better manage your plugins if you currently manage multiple WordPress sites.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Your WordPress Plugins Need Updating
The WordPress software is constantly updated (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in previous software versions, and to improve existing features or introduce new ones.
Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, there will typically be new new update notices for plugins when WordPress distributes an updated version.
The reason for this, is because most plugins for WordPress are created by third-party developers, so sometimes code in the newly-released WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were developed and tested with a previous version. Whenever this happens, there is a potential for conflicts 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 needed). All you have to do on your end, is just keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is really quick, simple and easy to do.
Keeping your WordPress plugins regularly updated and removing old plugins you no longer use is an essential aspect of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid any potential errors or problems.
The WordPress step-by-step tutorial below explains how to update and delete WordPress plugins in the WP admin dashboard without requiring web coding or programming knowledge or skills.
Upgrading And Deleting WordPress Plugins In Your Dashboard – Tutorial
WordPress provides a few ways to let users know when plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can tell immediately how many plugins need updating as soon as you log into your WordPress Dashboard just by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that 9 WordPress plugins need to be updated …
You can also tell how many plugins need updating from your WP Notification Toolbar (the example below shows that a number of plugins should be brought up to date) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you which plugins need updating …
In addition to 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 your plugins individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by showing you how to update individual WordPress plugins.
Upgrading WordPress Plugins One At A Time
Always make a full backup of your website before updating your blog or website.
From your dashboard menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
You will be taken to the “Plugins” section. The table of plugins can flow down your page for a while, depending on the number of plugins you have installed on your blog …
(Plugins Screen)
Useful Tips:
If you have too many plugins and would like to reduce the number of plugins displaying on the screen, 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 on the screen by default), then click Apply …
Your Plugins page will now be made more manageable with a ’numbered pages’ feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search Plugins” box …
WordPress displays plugin information in different color backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (active vs. inactive and up-to-date vs. out-of-date) …
Plugins that require upgrading 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 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 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 upgrade them all at once.
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Now that you know how to update individual plugins, let’s show you how to update multiple plugins simultaneously.
How To Bulk-Upgrade 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 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 drop down menu above the table of plugins, choose Update …
And then click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will begin updating …
Once all updates have been completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to the Plugins screen, or choose another option from the WP admin 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 your site uses the latest version of all plugins, notification icons do not display)
Now that you know how to automatically upgrade WP inside the dashboard, let’s show you how to delete plugins from your WordPress site or blog.
Deleting Plugins
As part of good blog management practice, it’s a good idea to delete inactive plugins. This reduces server resources and also eliminate potential problems.
In this section, you will learn how to safely remove 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 reinstall your site.
To remove a plugin, go to your WP 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 appear 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 …
Click on Delete …
If you would like 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 …
All files belonging to the plugin selected for removalwill be listed on your screen …
If you are absolutely sure about going ahead and deleting the selected plugin, click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugin(s) will be deleted …
How To Delete Several Plugins At Once
You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins on your site, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be removed.
Note: To delete any plugins that are currently 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 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 …
Your selected plugins will be deactivated …
To delete all or some of the inactive plugins on your site, go to the “Plugins” section 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 remove by checking their individual boxes …
Once you have ticked all the check boxes next to the plugins that you want deleted, specify Delete from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …
Click Apply …
A list of all selected plugins will show up 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 go ahead and delete all of the selected plugins …
Your selected plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
WordPress Plugin Management – WordPress Tools
In addition to the methods shown above, you can use WordPress plugins 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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