In another post, we provide an overview of what plugins are about and how you can use plugins to add new features to your blog with no technical knowledge required.
You can view this article here:
In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn why plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to automatically update and uninstall your WordPress plugins, and discover some plugin management tools if you currently run multiple WordPress sites or blogs.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Your WordPress Plugins Need Updating
WordPress constantly updates its software (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in earlier software versions, and to improve existing features or introduce new ones.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, there will typically be new new update notifications for WordPress plugins each time a new WordPress version is made available.
The reason for this, is because most plugins for WordPress are created by external developers, so sometimes the code in the new WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were created and tested to work with a previous version. Whenever this happens, conflicts can sometimes occur.
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 this is needed). All you need to do on your end, is just maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is very simple 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 problems.
The tutorial below explains how to upgrade and delete plugins safely with no web programming knowledge necessary.
How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete WordPress Plugins – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress uses several ways to inform you when plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can tell immediately how many plugins need updating as soon as you log into your Administration area by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
In the screenshot below, 9 WordPress plugins need to be updated …
You can also view how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Toolbar (the screenshot below shows how many plugins need updating) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you what plugins need to be updated …
In addition to providing information about which plugins have available updates, the Plugins page provides links to the plugin download pages and gives you the option to update your plugin instantly …
Let’s start by showing you how to upgrade one WordPress plugin at a time.
Updating Individual WordPress Plugins
Always make a full backup of your data and files before updating your website or blog.
In your dashboard menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” area will display in your browser. The page can be quite lengthy depending on how many plugins you have installed in your site …
(Plugins Page)
Useful Information:
If you have too many plugins and would like to reduce the number of plugins displaying on your screen, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins page and type in a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show on the page by default, i.e. “999”), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
Your Plugins page will now be reduced in size with a pagination feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search” field …
WordPress displays plugin information in different backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (active vs. inactive and out-of-date vs up-to-date) …
Plugins that require upgrading have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Insert Plugin Name] available” …
Find the plugin that needs updating and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides streamlined plugin updates, so that the process of updating your plugins takes place with just “one click” 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 upgrade them all in bulk.
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Now that you know how to update individual WP plugins, the next step is to learn how to bulk-upgrade WP plugins.
Bulk-Upgrading WP Plugins
To update multiple plugins in one go from your admin area, go to the “Plugins” page and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Click on the checkbox in 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 drop-down menu above your plugin list, select Update …
Click Apply …
Your selected plugins will automatically begin updating …
After all updates have completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to your Plugins area, or choose another option from the main menu …
Once all plugins are up-to-date, any plugin alerts 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, the notification icons disappear)
Now that you know how to update your inside your dashboard, let’s take a look at how to delete plugins from your WordPress site.
How To Remove Plugins
As part of good WordPress blog management practices, it’s a good idea to delete inactive plugins. This conserves resources on your server and also eliminates causes of problems.
In this section, you will learn how to deactivate and delete unused plugins from your site or blog.
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 restore your site.
To remove a plugin, go to your dashboard menu and choose Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins screen, locate the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is deactivated.
Hint: Inactive plugins are listed in 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 proceeding …
Click on Delete …
If you want 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” screen …
The entire list of files belonging to the plugin that you are about to remove will be listed on your screen …
If you are positively sure that you want to go ahead and delete the plugin, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugins and related files will be deleted …
How To Safely Delete Several Plugins Simultaneously
You can delete all inactive plugins at once, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be removed.
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 check box, 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, select Deactivate from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …
Click the Apply button …
The 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 …
Click on the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to remove by checking their individual boxes …
Once you have selected all the plugins that you want to delete, choose Delete from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …
Click the Apply button …
A list of all selected plugins will display 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 absolutely sure that you want to go ahead and delete all of the plugins listed …
Your selected plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
Useful Management Tools For WP Plugins
As well as the methods shown above, you can install a number of 3rd-party tools that help you manage your WordPress plugins.
PLUGIN CENTRAL
Plugin Central is a Free plugin that helps to improve the management of your plugins by allowing you to install plugins directly, displays the status of plugins in need of update in the WordPress Admin and also allows you to update many plugins at once in one click …
For more details about this plugin, visit the plugin site:
Managing WordPress Plugins On Multiple Sites
Whenever plugin updates get released, the best practice is to update that plugin as soon as possible.
What if you run multiple sites using the same plugin? Typically, you would need to login to every site and then go through the plugin update process from that site’s admin dashboard. If you manage multiple sites, this process can take quite some time!
WordPress Power User Tip: If you own multiple WordPress sites, you can install, update or deactivate plugins on all of your sites automatically and simultaneously using a number of WordPress management tools.
Below are just a few great WordPress management tools you should check out:
Jetpack Manage
The Jetpack plugin is a single WordPress plugin that offers users a wide range of features, allowing self-hosted WordPress site owners to benefit from WordPress.com’s infrastructure and take advantage of things like robust stats, automated social sharing, and many other features.
(Jetpack lets you access a range of powerful WordPress.com features)
One of these features is “Manage”.
Jetpack Manage lets you manage multiple WordPress sites and plugins from a single dashboard on WordPress.com.
With Manage, you can upgrade plugins, set plugins to update automatically, and activate or deactivate plugins on a per-site basis or in bulk, whether you’re on your laptop, tablet, or mobile phone.
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
ManageWP
(ManageWP is a widely used management tool for multiple WP sites)
ManageWP lets you easily manage all your sites from one dashboard, including upgrades, backups, security and more. This tool features easy one-click updates and instant login to your sites.
Visit this site to download the plugin:
WP Pipeline – Multiple WordPress Site Management Software
(With WP Pipeline, you can update all of your WordPress sites, plugins and themes from a single WordPress installation)
WP Pipeline is very similar to ManageWP, but sells for a one-time license fee instead of monthly payments. It lets you manage your entire portfolio of WordPress sites and perform multiple updates from a single dashboard.
Go here to download and use this plugin:
Congratulations! Now you know how to update and safely remove plugins via your dashboard.
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