In another blog post, we provide a detailed explanation of what WP plugins are all about and how you can use plugins to add new features or functionality to your website or blog without editing code.
You can read this article here:
In this tutorial you will learn why plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to safely update and uninstall plugins from your site, and some plugin management tools if you currently manage multiple WordPress sites or blogs.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Your WordPress Plugins Need Updating
New WordPress versions are regularly released (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in older versions, as well as 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 notifications for plugins every.
The reason for this, is because most plugins for WordPress are created by third-party developers, so sometimes code or features in the new WordPress version conflict with plugins that were developed for a previous version. When this happens, there is a potential for issues to 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 have to do on your end, is maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is very simple, quick and easy to do.
Keeping your plugins regularly updated and removing old plugins you no longer use is an essential aspect of good WordPress management and helps to avoid potential errors or conflicts.
The tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins safely in WordPress without editing web code.
Upgrading And Deleting WordPress Plugins Safely From The Dashboard – Tutorial
WordPress utilizes several methods to alert you when plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can instantly see how many plugins are out-of-date as soon as you log into your Admin area by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
In the screenshot below, you can see that nine plugins have older versions that need to be updated …
You can also see how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Toolbar (the screenshot below shows that several plugins should be brought up to date) …
The Plugins screen (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you what plugins need to be updated …
As well as providing information about plugins that have available updates, the Plugins screen provides links to the plugin download sites and gives you the option to update your plugins with one-click …
Let’s start by learning how to update plugins individually.
Upgrade WordPress Plugins One At A Time
Always make a backup of your website before upgrading your website or blog.
From your dashboard menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” section will display in your browser. The list of plugins can go down your screen for a while, depending on the number of plugins you have added to your site …
(The WordPress Plugins Screen)
Additional Information:
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 the ‘Apply’ button …
Your Plugins page will now be made more manageable with a ’numbered pages’ feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search” feature …
You will see information about plugins in different color backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (inactive vs. active and out-of-date vs up-to-date) …
Plugins that require updating 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 smooth & fast plugin updates, so that the process of updating your plugins takes place “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins screen …
Repeat this process for all plugins on your site that need updating, or see the section below if you have many plugins that are out-of-date and would like to upgrade all plugins in bulk.
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Now that you know how to update plugins individually, let’s show you how to upgrade multiple WP plugins simultaneously.
How To Update Various WordPress Plugins Simultaneously
To upgrade multiple plugins in one go from your admin area, go to the “Plugins” screen 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 pull-down menu at the top of the page, select Update …
Click Apply …
Your selected plugins will begin the update process …
Once all plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to your Plugins screen, or go to another section of your dashboard …
Once your plugins are all up-to-date, any plugin alerts 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 all up-to-date, update alerts no longer display)
Now that you know how to automatically upgrade plugins, let’s show you how to safely remove plugins safely from your site or blog.
How To Safely Remove Plugins
It’s a good idea to remove plugins that you no longer need. This helps to reduce resources on your server and eliminates 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 admin menu and click on Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins area, locate the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is deactivated.
Hint: Inactive plugins appear in a different colored background than active plugins and show an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, then click on Deactivate before proceeding …
Once you have deactivated the plugin, click Delete …
If you need to browse 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 …
The entire list of files associated with the plugin selected for deletionwill be listed on your screen …
If you are absolutely sure that you want to go ahead and delete the selected plugin, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugin(s) will be deleted …
How To Delete Multiple WordPress Plugins Simultaneously
You can delete all inactive plugins at once, 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 check box, or selecting the check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …
Next, choose Deactivate from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …
Click Apply …
The 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 …
Tick the check box in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to remove by checking its box …
Once you have ticked all the checkboxes next to the plugins that you want deleted, select Delete from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …
Click Apply …
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 sure that you would like to proceed to the next step and remove all of the selected plugins …
Your selected plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
WordPress Management Tools For Plugins
As well as the methods shown above, you can use other WordPress plugins that let you 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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