In a separate blog post, we provide an overview of what plugins are about and how you can use plugins to easily add new features to your website or blog without editing code.
You can view the article here:
In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn why WordPress plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to automatically upgrade and remove your WordPress plugins, and discover practical plugin management tools.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Plugins Need To Be Upgraded
New WordPress versions are regularly released (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in older software versions, and 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.
The reason for 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 built for a previous version. Whenever this happens, problems can sometimes occur.
Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are quite proactive when it comes to ensuring that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if this is required). All you have to do as a WordPress user, is simply maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is very simple to do.
Keeping your plugins up-to-date and removing old plugins you no longer need is part of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid conflicts and errors.
The WordPress tutorial below explains how to update and delete plugins safely from your dashboard without editing web code.
How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely In The Dashboard – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress has several ways of letting users know when plugins need updating.
For example, you can see how many plugins need to be updated from your Administration area by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
In the example below, 9 WordPress plugins need updating …
You can also tell how many plugins need updating from your WP Toolbar (the screenshot below shows that nine plugins need updating) …
The Plugins page (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you how many plugins need updating …
In addition to providing information about which plugins have updates available, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin download pages and gives you the option to update the plugins individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by learning how to update individual WordPress plugins.
Upgrade Plugins One At A Time
We recommend performing a complete backup of your data and files before updating your website or blog.
In your dashboard menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” section will display in your browser. The list of plugins can flow down your screen for some length, depending on how many plugins you have added to your blog …
(Plugins Screen)
Additional Info:
If you have too many plugins installed 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 page), then click Apply …
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 Plugins” feature …
WordPress displays plugin information in different color backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (inactive vs. active and outdated vs up-to-date) …
Plugins that require upgrading have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Insert Plugin Name] available” …
Locate the plugin that you want to update and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides smooth & simpler plugin updates, so that updating your plugins takes place with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat this process for all plugins on your site that need updating, or refer to the section below if you have many plugins that are out-of-date and would like to upgrade all plugins at the same time.
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Now that you know how to update individual WP plugins, the next step is to learn how to bulk-update plugins.
How To Upgrade Many Plugins Simultaneously
To bulk-upgrade plugins directly inside your dashboard, go to the “Plugins” page 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 upgrade by checking its box …
In the Bulk Actions drop-down menu at the top of the page, choose Update …
Click Apply …
Your selected plugins will begin to update automatically …
After all plugin updates are completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to the Plugins screen, or select another option from the WordPress admin menu …
Once your plugins are all up-to-date, the update reminders 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 your site uses the latest version of all plugins, notification icons do not display)
Now that you know how to update in your WP dashboard, let’s take a look at how to safely remove plugins from your blog or website.
How To Remove Plugins
It’s a good idea to delete inactive plugins. This conserves resources on your server and helps to eliminate causes of problems.
In this section, we show you how to safely delete unused plugins from your WordPress 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 delete a plugin, go to your dashboard menu and choose Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins page, find the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is deactivated.
Hint: Inactive plugins use 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 proceeding …
Once you have deactivated the plugin, click Delete …
If you need 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” page …
A complete list of files belonging to the plugin selected for deletionwill be listed on your screen …
If you are absolutely sure about going ahead and deleting the plugin, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugins and related files will be deleted …
How To Safely Bulk-Delete 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 checkbox, or selecting the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …
Once you have done this, choose Deactivate from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …
Click Apply …
Your selected plugins will be deactivated …
To delete all or some of the inactive plugins, go to the “Plugins” page and click on the Inactive link on the main menu …
Tick the checkbox in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins 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, select Delete from the Bulk Actions drop down 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 go ahead and delete all of the plugins listed …
The plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
Useful Management Tools For Plugins
As well as the methods shown above, you can use a range of 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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