In a separate article, we provide a detailed explanation of what WP plugins are all about and how you can use plugins to increase your website’s capabilities.
To read the article, go here:
In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping WordPress plugins up-to-date, how to easily upgrade and uninstall plugins from your site, and practical tools to help you better manage your plugins.
Why Your Plugins Need Regular Upgrading
New versions of WordPress are regularly released (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in earlier software releases, as well as to improve existing features.
Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, there will typically be new new update notifications for WordPress plugins each time a new WordPress version is announced.
This is because most WordPress plugins are created by external developers, so sometimes the code in the newly-released WordPress version conflict with plugins that were created and tested to work with a previous version. Whenever this happens, problems can sometimes develop.
Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are fairly 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 have to do on your end, is keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is very simple and easy to do.
Keeping your plugins regularly updated and deleting old plugins you no longer use is part of good WordPress management and helps to avoid conflicts or errors.
The tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins without coding skills necessary.
How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely – Tutorial
WordPress employs several methods of letting users know when plugins on their site need to be updated.
For example, you can instantly see how many plugins need to be updated as soon as you log into your Site’s Dashboard by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that 9 WordPress plugins are out of date and need updating …
You can also view how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Admin Toolbar (the screenshot below shows that 9 plugins require updating) …
The Plugins screen (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you what plugins need updating …
In addition to providing information about which plugins have updates available, the Plugins page provides links to the plugin developer pages and gives you the option to update your plugin individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by learning how to upgrade individual plugins.
Updating Plugins Individually
We strongly recommend making a backup of your site files and database before making any updates to your website or blog.
From your WP admin menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
You will be taken to the “Plugins” section. The table of plugins can be quite lengthy depending on how many plugins you have installed on your blog …
(Plugins Screen)
Notes:
If you have too many plugins and would like to make this section more manageable, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins page and enter a smaller number of items per page (by default, all plugins display on the screen), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
Your Plugins area 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” function …
WordPress displays plugin information in different backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (active vs. inactive and up-to-date vs. out-of-date) …
Plugins that require updating have a distinctive 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 has done away with the loading screen when updating plugins and streamlined the process, so that the process of updating your plugins takes place with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat the above process for all plugins on your site that need to be updated, or refer to the section below if you have many plugins that are out-of-date and would like to update them all in bulk.
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Now that you know how to update plugins one at a time, the next step is to learn how to bulk-upgrade WP plugins.
How To Upgrade Several WordPress Plugins Simultaneously
To upgrade multiple plugins at the same time directly inside your dashboard, go to the “Plugins” screen 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 their individual boxes …
In the Bulk Actions pull-down menu above your plugin list, choose Update …
And then click Apply …
Your selected plugins will automatically begin updating …
Once all plugin updates are completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to your Plugins area, or select a different section of your dashboard …
Once your plugins are all 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” messages no longer display) …
You have updated all plugins on your site to their latest version!
(When your site or blog uses the latest version of all plugins, update messages no longer appear)
Now that you know how to update inside the admin dashboard, let’s show you how to delete plugins from your site.
How To Remove Plugins
It’s a good idea to remove plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This can help conserve resources on your server and also help to minimize causes of some problems.
In this section, we show you how to safely deactivate and delete unused plugins from your blog or site.
Always create 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 reinstall your site.
To remove a plugin, go to your main menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins screen, locate the plugin you want to delete and make sure it is inactive.
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, then click on Deactivate before going any further …
Once you have deactivated the plugin, click Delete …
If you would like to have a look at 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” section …
A complete list of files associated with the plugin selected for removalwill be listed on your screen …
If you are certain about going ahead and deleting these plugin files, click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugins and related files will be deleted from your WordPress installation …
How To Safely Delete Multiple Plugins Simultaneously
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 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, select Deactivate from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …
Click Apply …
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 next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to delete by checking their individual boxes …
Once you have ticked all the check boxes next to the plugins that you want to delete, choose Delete from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …
Click Apply …
A list of all selected plugins will be displayed 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 absolutely certain 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 …
Management Tools For WordPress Plugins
In addition to the methods shown above, you can install other 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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