In another article, we provide a detailed explanation of what plugins are all about and how you can use these to add new features or functionality to your website or blog with no coding knowledge required.
You can read the article here:
In this tutorial you will learn why WordPress plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to safely update and uninstall your WordPress plugins, and discover useful tips to help you better manage your plugins.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Your Plugins Need To Be Upgraded
The WordPress software is constantly updated (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in older software versions, as well as 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 WordPress plugins every.
This is because most plugins for WordPress are created by third-party developers, so sometimes features in the new WordPress version conflict with plugins that were developed and tested with a previous version. When this happens, problems can sometimes occur.
Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are very proactive when it comes to ensuring that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if needed). All you need to do on your end, is maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is very simple to do.
Keeping your plugins regularly updated and deleting old plugins you no longer use is part of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid potential errors or problems.
The WordPress tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete WordPress plugins safely in your WordPress admin dashboard without requiring coding skills.
Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely From Your Dashboard – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress employs a few methods of letting you know when plugins on your blog need updating.
For example, you can tell immediately how many plugins need updating as soon as you log into your Admin area just by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that nine WP plugins need to be updated …
You can also check how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Administration Toolbar (as shown below, nine plugins require updating) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you what plugins need to be updated …
As well as providing information about plugins that have updates available, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin developer pages and gives you the option to update your plugins individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by showing you how to update one WordPress plugin at a time.
How To Upgrade WordPress Plugins Individually
Always make a full backup of your data and files before making any changes to your website.
From your WP admin menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” screen will display in your browser. This page can be quite long depending on the number of plugins you have added to your blog …
(Plugins Screen)
Useful Information:
If you have too many plugins and would like to reduce the number of plugins showing on your page, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins page and enter a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show up on the screen by default), then click Apply …
Your Plugins area 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 …
WordPress displays information about plugins in different color backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (active vs. inactive and up-to-date vs. out-of-date) …
Plugins in need of updating have a distinctive 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 the process of 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 refer to the section below if you have a number of plugins that are out-of-date and would like to update them all at once.
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Now that you know how to update one WordPress plugin at a time, the next step is to learn how to update multiple plugins simultaneously.
How To Bulk-Update WordPress Plugins
To upgrade multiple WordPress plugins in a single operation 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 …
Tick the checkbox in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to update by checking their individual boxes …
In the Bulk Actions drop-down menu above the list of plugins, choose Update …
And then click Apply …
Your selected plugins will automatically begin to update …
Once all plugin updates are finished, 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 on your screen, toolbar and menus) …
You have updated all plugins on your site to their latest version!
(When plugins on your site are up-to-date, update messages disappear)
Now that you know how to automatically upgrade your inside your admin dashboard, let’s show you how to remove plugins from your WordPress blog or website.
Deleting WordPress Plugins
As part of good WordPress management practice, it’s a good idea to delete plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This can help to reduce server resources and also helps to eliminate potential problems.
In this section, we show you how to safely delete unused plugins from your 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 reinstall your site.
To remove a plugin, go to your WP admin menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins area, find the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is inactive.
Hint: Inactive plugins use 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 …
Next, click on Delete …
If you would like 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 that you are about to delete will display on your screen …
If you are absolutely certain about going ahead and deleting the selected plugin, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugins and related files will be deleted from your server …
Bulk-Deleting WP Plugins
You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be cleared.
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, specify Deactivate from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …
Click the Apply button …
Your selected plugins will be deactivated …
Once you have deactivated your plugins, click on the Inactive link on the menu at the top of the page …
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 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 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 would like to proceed to the next step and remove all of the plugins listed …
The plugins will be deleted …
Plugin Management – WordPress Tools
As well as the methods shown above, you can install a number of 3rd-party tools 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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