In a separate post, we provide a detailed explanation of what plugins are all about and how you can use these to easily increase your website’s capabilities.
To view this article, go here:
In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping WordPress plugins up-to-date, how to update and remove your WordPress plugins, and discover useful plugin management tips if you currently run or manage multiple WordPress sites.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Many Of Your Plugins Need Upgrading
New versions of WordPress are frequently being released (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 functionality to WordPress users.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, you can expect to see at least some new new update notices for WordPress plugins each time a new WordPress version is released.
The reason for this, is because most plugins for WordPress are created by external developers, so sometimes the code in the newly-released WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were built for a previous version. Whenever this happens, conflicts can sometimes develop.
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 have to do on your end, is just keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is really simple and easy to do.
Keeping your WordPress plugins up-to-date and removing old plugins you no longer use is an essential aspect of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid errors and problems.
The step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins safely without web coding knowledge needed.
How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Safely – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress uses a few methods of letting you know when your plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can immediately see how many plugins are out-of-date from your Administration panel by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that nine plugins have older versions that need to be updated …
You can also tell how many plugins need updating from your WP Admin Toolbar (the example below shows that several plugins require updating) …
The Plugins screen (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also provides information about plugins that need to be updated …
In addition to 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 your plugin instantly …
Let’s start by showing you how to update plugins one at a time.
Upgrading Individual WordPress Plugins
Always make a full backup of your website before making any changes to your blog or website.
In your dashboard menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” page will display in your browser. The page can be quite lengthy depending on the number of plugins you have added to your blog …
(The WordPress Plugins Page)
Useful Info:
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 area and enter a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show on the screen by default), then click Apply …
Your Plugins section 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 …
You will see plugin information in different color backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (active vs. inactive and up-to-date vs. outdated) …
Plugins in need of upgrading display the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Insert Plugin Name] available” …
Find the plugin that you want to update and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides faster plugin updating, so that 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 see the section below if you have several 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 upgrade individual WordPress plugins, let’s show you how to update multiple WordPress plugins simultaneously.
How To Bulk-Upgrade Plugins
To update multiple plugins in one go 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 only the plugins you want to update by checking their individual boxes …
In the Bulk Actions drop down menu above the table of plugins, select Update …
And then click Apply …
Your selected plugins will begin the update process …
Once your plugins have all been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to your Plugins section, or visit another 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 on your screen, toolbar and menus) …
All plugins are now up-to-date!
(When plugins on your site are up-to-date, the notification icons disappear)
Now that you know how to upgrade WP plugins, let’s take a look at how to remove plugins from your blog or website.
Deleting Plugins
Occasionally, you may choose to remove WordPress plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This decreases server resources and help to reduce problems.
In this section, we show you how to delete unused plugins from your WordPress 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 delete a plugin, go to your dashboard menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins section, 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, then click on Deactivate before continuing with your plugin deletion …
Click on Delete …
If you would like to browse 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” screen …
A complete list of files belonging to the plugin selected for deletionwill display on your screen …
If you are sure about going ahead and deleting the plugin, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugin(s) will be deleted …
How To Bulk-Delete Plugins
You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be uninstalled.
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 check box 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 dropdown menu …
Click the Apply button …
The selected plugins will be deactivated …
Once you have deactivated these plugins, click on the Inactive 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 delete by checking its box …
Once you have selected all the plugins that you want deleted, select 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 sure that you would like to go ahead and remove all of the selected plugins …
All selected plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
Management Tools For Plugins
In addition to the methods shown above, you can install a number of tools that help you 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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