Category: WordPress Plugins

In another post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use these to increase your website’s capabilities.

To read the article, go here:

• Using WP Plugins To Extend Your Site’s Features

In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn why plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to upgrade and delete plugins, and some great plugin management tools.

Why Plugins Need Updating

The WordPress software is regularly updated (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in older software releases, as well as to improve existing features.

Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, there will typically be new new update notifications for plugins every.

The reason for this, is because most WordPress plugins are created by third-party developers, so sometimes the code in the newly-released WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were built for a previous version. Whenever 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 required). All you have to do on your end, is keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is really simple, quick and easy to do.

Keeping your WordPress plugins up-to-date and deleting old plugins you no longer need is part of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid any errors and conflicts.

The tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins in WordPress with no coding skills needed.

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins In WordPress – Tutorial

WordPress utilizes a few methods to let you know when plugins on your site need updating.

For example, you can tell immediately how many plugins are out-of-date from your Administration area by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.

For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that nine WordPress plugins are out of date and need to be updated …

You can also see how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Administration Toolbar (the screenshot below shows that several plugins need updating) …

The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you how many plugins need to be updated …

As well as providing information about which plugins have updates available, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin developer pages and gives you the option to update the plugins individually or in bulk …

Let’s start by showing you how to upgrade individual WP plugins.

Updating Individual WordPress Plugins

Always make a complete backup of your website before upgrading your blog or website.

In your admin menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …

The “Plugins” section will display in your browser. The screen can be quite long depending on the number of plugins you have installed in your blog …

(WordPress Plugins Page)

Useful Tips:

If you have too many plugins and would like to reduce the number of plugins displayed on the screen, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins screen 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 page scrolling feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search” box …

You will see plugin information in different backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (inactive vs. active and up-to-date vs. outdated) …

Plugins in need of upgrading show the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin Name] 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 happens “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins screen …

Repeat the above process for all plugins on your site that need to be updated, or see the section below if you have several plugins that are out-of-date and would like to update all plugins in one simple operation.

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Now that you know how to upgrade one plugin at a time, it’s time to learn how to upgrade multiple WP plugins simultaneously.

How To Upgrade Many Plugins Simultaneously

To bulk-update plugins 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 …

Tick the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to update by checking its box …

In the Bulk Actions dropdown menu at the top of the page, choose Update …

Click Apply …

The plugins you have selected will begin to update automatically …

Once the update process has completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to your Plugins screen, or select a different section of your dashboard …

Once all plugins are up-to-date, the plugin notifications disappear (i.e. the “at-a-glance” indicators and “There is a new version of XYZ plugin available” notices no longer display) …

All plugins have now been upgraded to their latest versions!

(When your site or blog uses the latest version of all plugins, update alerts disappear)

Now that you know how to upgrade WordPress plugins, it’s time to learn how to safely delete plugins safely from your site.

Deleting WP Plugins

It’s a good idea to uninstall plugins that you no longer need. This helps to conserve resources on your server and helps to eliminate causes of problems.

In this section, you will learn how to uninstall unused plugins from your blog or site.

We strongly recommend creating 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 restore your site.

To remove a plugin, go to your main menu and click on Plugins > Installed Plugins …

In the Plugins screen, find the plugin you want to delete and make sure it is deactivated.

Hint: Inactive plugins use a different colored background than active plugins and display an “Activate” link below the plugin name …

If the plugin is active, click on Deactivate before continuing with your plugin deletion …

Once you have deactivated the plugin, click Delete …

If you need to have a look at all the files that will be deleted before going ahead, then click on the “Click to view entire list of files which will be deleted” link in the “Delete Plugin” page …

All files associated with the plugin selected for removalwill display on your screen …

If you are absolutely sure that you would like to go ahead and delete the selected plugin files, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …

Your plugins and related files will be deleted …

Bulk-Deleting WP Plugins

You can delete all inactive plugins at once, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be deleted.

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 checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …

Next, specify 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” section and click on the Inactive link on the main menu …

Select all of the plugins you want to delete by either placing a tick next to their check box, or click on the check box next to the Plugin column header to select and delete all inactive plugins …

Once you have selected all 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 sure 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 …

WordPress Plugin Management – WordPress Tools

In addition to the methods shown above, you can use 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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