In another article, we provide a detailed explanation of what WordPress plugins are all about and how you can use plugins to easily add new features to your web site without editing code.
You can read the article here:
In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping all plugins up-to-date, how to automatically upgrade and uninstall your WordPress plugins, and discover useful tips to help you better manage your plugins if you manage multiple WordPress sites.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Many Of Your WordPress Plugins Need Upgrading
The WordPress software is regularly updated (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in earlier software releases, and to improve existing features or introduce new ones.
Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, you can expect to see at least some new new update notices for WordPress plugins each time a new version of WordPress is made available.
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 created and tested to work with a previous version. Whenever this happens, conflicts can sometimes develop.
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 updating is needed). All you have to do on your end, is just maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is really simple and easy to do.
Keeping your plugins regularly updated and removing old plugins you no longer use is part of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid potential errors and conflicts.
The WordPress tutorial below explains how to upgrade and delete plugins safely without touching web code.
Upgrading And Deleting Plugins In WordPress – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress uses a few methods to notify you when plugins need updating.
For example, you can immediately see how many plugins need to be updated as soon as you log into your WordPress Dashboard simply by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, nine WP plugins have older versions that need to be updated …
You can also see how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Administration Toolbar (as shown below, nine plugins have to be updated) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also provides information about plugins that need to be updated …
In addition to providing information about plugins that have available updates, the Plugins screen provides links to the plugin developer sites and gives you the option to update your plugin individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by learning how to update one plugin at a time.
How To Update Plugins One At A Time
We strongly recommend making a complete backup of your data and files before making any upgrades to your website.
From your admin menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
You will be taken to the “Plugins” page. The list of plugins can run down your page for some length, depending on how many plugins you have installed in your blog …
(The WordPress Plugins Screen)
Useful Tips:
If you have too many plugins installed 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 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 pagination feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search” field …
WordPress displays information about plugins in different backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (active vs. inactive and up-to-date vs. outdated) …
Plugins in need of updating show the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Insert Plugin Name] available” …
Locate 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 this process for all plugins on your site that need to be updated, or refer to 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 update one plugin at a time, let’s show you how to bulk-upgrade WordPress plugins.
Bulk-Updating WP Plugins
To bulk-update WP plugins simultaneously using the automatic update feature, go to the “Plugins” section 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 each plugin you want to upgrade by checking their individual boxes …
In the Bulk Actions drop down menu above the plugin table, select Update …
And then click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will all be updated at once …
Once your plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to the Plugins screen, or visit a different section of your dashboard …
Once your plugins are all up-to-date, the plugin notifications disappear (i.e. the “at-a-glance” indicators and “There is a new version of XYZ plugin available” messages no longer display) …
All plugins have now been updated to their latest versions!
(When your site or blog uses the latest version of all plugins, the notification icons no longer appear)
Now that you know how to upgrade plugins, it’s time to learn how to safely delete plugins safely from your WordPress site or blog.
How To Remove Plugins
It’s a good idea to remove plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This helps to conserve resource usage and will help you avoid causes of problems.
In this section, we show you how to uninstall unused plugins from your WordPress 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 WP admin menu and choose Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins section, locate the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is inactive.
Hint: Inactive plugins have 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 going any further …
Next, click on Delete …
If you want 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 …
The entire list of files belonging to the plugin selected for deletionwill display on your screen …
If you are absolutely certain about going ahead and deleting these plugin files, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugins and related files will be deleted from your server …
How To Safely Delete Multiple WP Plugins At Once
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 first need to 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) …
Next, specify Deactivate from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …
Click the Apply button …
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 in the Plugins menu …
Select all of the plugins you want to delete by either placing a tick next to their check box, or click on the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select and delete all inactive plugins …
Once you have selected all the plugins that you want deleted, select Delete from the Bulk Actions drop-down 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 want to proceed to the next step and remove all of the selected plugins …
All plugins will be deleted …
Plugin Management – Tools
In addition to the methods shown above, you can install WordPress plugins to manage your 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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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum