In another blog post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use plugins to easily expand your blog’s functionality.
You can view this article here:
In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping all WordPress plugins up-to-date, how to update and delete your WordPress plugins, and discover useful plugin management tools.
Why Some Of Your WordPress Plugins Need To Be Updated
WordPress frequently updates its software (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in earlier versions, as well as 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 each time a new version of WordPress is announced.
This is because most WordPress plugins are created by third-party developers, so sometimes code in the new WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were developed for a previous version. Whenever this happens, problems 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 required). All you need to do as a website owner, is simply maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is really simple to do.
Keeping your WordPress plugins up-to-date and removing old plugins you no longer use is part of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid potential errors and problems.
The tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins safely with no web coding knowledge required.
Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely From The Dashboard – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress uses several ways to inform users when plugins need updating.
For example, you can instantly see how many plugins are out-of-date as soon as you log into your Admin area just by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
In the example below, you can see that 9 plugins are out of date and need to be updated …
You can also check how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Toolbar (as shown below, a number of plugins have to be updated) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also lets you know which plugins need updating …
As well as providing information about plugins that have available updates, the Plugins screen provides links to the plugin developer pages and gives you the option to update the plugins individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by learning how to update individual plugins.
Updating Plugins One At A Time
Always make a full backup of your site files and database before upgrading your blog or website.
From your WP admin menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
You will be taken to the “Plugins” page. The list of plugins can go down your screen for a while, depending on the number of plugins you have installed on your blog …
(The WordPress Plugins Screen)
Tips:
If you have too many plugins installed and would like to reduce the number of plugins displaying on your 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 Apply …
Your Plugins page will now be made more manageable with a pagination feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search Installed Plugins” function …
WordPress displays plugin information in different color backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (inactive vs. active and up-to-date vs. outdated) …
Plugins that require upgrading display the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] available” …
Locate the plugin that needs to be updated and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides streamlined plugin updates, so that updating your plugins happens “behind the scenes” 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 all plugins in bulk.
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Now that you know how to upgrade individual plugins, it’s time to learn how to update a bunch of plugins simultaneously.
Bulk-Updating Plugins
To bulk-update plugins from your admin area, go to the “Plugins” area and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Click the check box next to 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 plugin table, choose Update …
Click Apply …
Your selected plugins will automatically begin updating …
Once all updates have completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to the Plugins screen, or visit a different section of your dashboard …
Once all plugins are up-to-date, the update reminders will disappear (i.e. the “at-a-glance” indicators and “There is a new version of XYZ plugin available” notices no longer display on your screen, toolbar and menus) …
All plugins have now been upgraded!
(When your plugins are all up-to-date, update alerts no longer display)
Now that you know how to upgrade WordPress in the WP dashboard, it’s time to learn how to remove plugins from your site.
Deleting Plugins
As part of good site management, it’s a good idea to remove plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This can conserve resource usage and also help to reduce causes of problems.
In this section, we show you how to safely remove unused plugins from your WordPress site.
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 restore your site.
To delete a plugin, go to your dashboard menu and click on Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins area, locate the plugin you want to delete and make sure it is deactivated.
Hint: Inactive plugins appear 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 …
Click on Delete …
If you want to browse all the files that will be deleted before proceeding any further, 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 sure about going ahead and deleting the plugin, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugins and related files will be deleted …
How To Bulk-Delete WordPress Plugins
You can delete all inactive plugins at once, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be cleared.
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 check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …
Once you have done this, specify 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 in the Plugins menu …
Select all of the plugins you want to delete by either placing a tick next to their checkbox, or click on the check box next to the Plugin column header to select and delete all inactive plugins …
Once you have ticked all the check boxes next to the plugins that you want to delete, select Delete from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …
Click the Apply button …
A list of all selected plugins will show up 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 would like to proceed to the next step and remove all of the selected plugins …
The plugins will be deleted …
Tools For Managing WP Plugins
In addition to the methods shown above, you can install 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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