In a separate article, we explain what plugins are and how you can use these to easily enhance your blog’s capabilities.
To read the article, go here:
In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping your plugins up-to-date, how to safely update and uninstall plugins, and some tips to help you better manage your plugins if you plan to manage multiple WordPress sites.
Why Your Plugins Need Regular Upgrading
WordPress constantly updates its software (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in older versions, and to improve existing features or introduce new ones.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, there will typically be new new update notifications for WordPress plugins each time a new version of WordPress is announced.
The reason for this, is because most WordPress plugins are created by external developers, so sometimes the code in the new WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were built for a previous version. When this happens, problems can 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 this is required). All you need to do as a WordPress user, is just keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is really simple, quick and easy to do.
Keeping your WordPress plugins regularly updated and deleting old plugins you no longer need is part of good WordPress management and helps to avoid any conflicts or errors.
The tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins in WordPress without touching web code.
Upgrading And Deleting Plugins From Your WP Admin Dashboard – Tutorial
WordPress uses several methods to let users know when plugins need updating.
For example, you can see how many plugins need updating as soon as you log into your Admin area by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that 9 plugins need updating …
You can also tell how many plugins need to be updated from your WordPress Toolbar (in the screenshot below, you can again see that nine plugins should be updated) …
The Plugins screen (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you which plugins need to be updated …
As well as providing information about which plugins have updates available, the Plugins screen provides links to the plugin developer sites and gives you the option to update your plugin individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by learning how to upgrade WP plugins one at a time.
Upgrading Plugins Individually
Always make a complete backup of your data and files before making any updates to your blog or website.
From your dashboard menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” screen will display in your browser. This table of plugins can be quite lengthy depending on how many plugins you have added to your site …
(The WordPress Plugins Page)
Useful Info:
If you have too many plugins and would like to reduce the number of plugins displayed on your page, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins area and enter a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show up on the screen by default, i.e. “999”), then click Apply …
Your Plugins page 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 Plugins” function …
You will see information about plugins in different color backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (active vs. inactive and out-of-date vs up-to-date) …
Plugins in need of upgrading show the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin Name] available” …
Select the plugin that needs to be updated and click on the update now link …
WordPress has done away with the loading screen when updating plugins and streamlined the plugin update process, so that the process of updating your plugins takes place “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat the above process for all plugins on your site that need to be updated, or see the section below if you have a number of plugins that are out-of-date and would like to upgrade them all at the same time.
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Now that you know how to update one WP plugin at a time, the next step is to learn how to update several plugins simultaneously.
How To Update Various Plugins Simultaneously
To bulk-upgrade plugins simultaneously directly inside your dashboard, go to the “Plugins” section 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 each plugin you want to update by checking their individual boxes …
In the Bulk Actions drop-down menu above the table of plugins, select Update …
Click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will automatically begin to update …
Once all updates have been completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to the Plugins section, or choose another option from the WP dashboard menu …
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) …
All plugins are now up-to-date!
(When plugins on your site are all up-to-date, update icons no longer appear)
Now that you know how to upgrade WP plugins, it’s time to learn how to safely uninstall plugins from your WordPress site or blog.
Deleting Plugins
As part of good WordPress management practices, it’s a good idea to remove plugins that you no longer require. This helps to conserve server resources and eliminates problems.
In this section, we show you how to delete unused plugins from your 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 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, click on Deactivate before continuing with your plugin deletion …
Click on Delete …
If you would like to review a list of all the files that will be deleted before taking the next step, 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 display on your screen …
If you are absolutely sure about going ahead and deleting these plugin files, click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugin(s) will be deleted …
How To Bulk-Delete WP Plugins
You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be deleted.
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 checkbox, 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, select Deactivate from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …
Click the Apply button …
Your selected plugins will be deactivated …
To delete all or some of the inactive plugins, go to the “Plugins” screen 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 drop down menu …
Click the Apply button …
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 sure that you would like to go ahead and delete all of the selected plugins …
Your plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
Managing WP Plugins
In addition to the methods shown above, you can install a number of tools that help you manage your 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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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum