In another post, we provide a detailed explanation of what plugins are about and how you can use these to expand your site’s functionality.
To view this article, go here:
In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping plugins up-to-date, how to safely upgrade and uninstall plugins from your site, and discover some tools to help you better manage your plugins if you own or manage multiple WordPress sites or blogs.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Some Of Your WordPress Plugins Need Updating
WordPress regularly updates its software (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in earlier versions, as well as to improve existing features or introduce new ones.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, you can expect to see at least some new new update notices for plugins every.
This is because most WordPress plugins are created by external developers, so sometimes code or features in the newly-released WordPress version conflict with plugins that were built for a previous version. Whenever this happens, issues can sometimes occur.
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 updating is needed). All you have to do on your end, is maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is really easy and simple to do.
Keeping your WordPress plugins up-to-date and deleting old plugins you no longer need is an essential aspect of good WordPress management and helps to avoid any errors and problems.
The step-by-step tutorial below explains how to update and delete plugins without web coding knowledge necessary.
How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins – Tutorial
WordPress employs several methods of letting you know when your plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can immediately see how many plugins need updating inside your Administration panel just by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
In the screenshot below, you can see that 9 WordPress plugins are out of date and need to be updated …
You can also view how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Admin Toolbar (the screenshot below shows that 9 plugins need to be updated) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also lets you know which plugins need updating …
In addition to providing information about plugins that have available updates, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin download sites and gives you the option to update your plugins with one-click …
Let’s start by showing you how to update individual WP plugins.
How To Upgrade Plugins One At A Time
We recommend making a full backup of your website before updating your blog or website.
From your admin menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” page will display in your browser. The screen can be quite long depending on how many plugins you have installed in your blog …
(Plugins Page)
Additional Information:
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 screen and type in a smaller number of items per page (by default, all plugins display on the page), then click Apply …
Your Plugins area 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 Plugins” box …
WordPress displays 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 in need of upgrading have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin Name] available” …
Find the plugin that you want to update and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides fast plugin updates, so that the process of updating your plugins happens “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat the above process for all plugins on your site that need to be updated, or refer to the section below if you have a number of plugins that are out-of-date and would like to update all plugins at once.
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Now that you know how to update plugins individually, let’s show you how to bulk-update WP plugins.
How To Bulk-Update WP Plugins
To update multiple plugins at the same time using the automatic upgrade feature, go to the “Plugins” page and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Tick the checkbox next to 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 dropdown menu above your plugin list, choose Update …
And then click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will update all at once …
Once all plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to the Plugins area, or select another option from the dashboard menu …
Once all plugins are up-to-date, the update reminders 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) …
All plugins have now been updated!
(When plugins on your site are all up-to-date, update alerts no longer appear)
Now that you know how to automatically update inside your WP dashboard, it’s time to learn how to uninstall plugins safely from your blog or website.
Deleting WordPress Plugins
Occasionally, you may want to remove plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This helps to reduce resource usage and also helps to eliminate causes of some problems.
In this section, we show you how to delete unused plugins from your WordPress site or blog.
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 reinstall your site.
To delete a plugin, go to your admin menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins page, find the plugin you want to delete and make sure it is deactivated.
Hint: Inactive plugins use a different colored background than active plugins and show an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, click on Deactivate before continuing …
Next, click on Delete …
If you need to have a look at all the files that will be deleted before proceeding any further, 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 that you are about to remove will be listed on your screen …
If you are certain about going ahead and deleting the plugin files, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugin(s) will be deleted …
Deleting Several WordPress Plugins In Bulk
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 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 checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …
Once you have done this, specify 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 on your site, go to the “Plugins” section and click on the Inactive link on the main menu …
Select all of the plugins you want to delete by either placing a tick next to their checkbox, 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, specify 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 absolutely sure that you would like to go ahead and remove all of the selected plugins …
Your plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
Managing WordPress Plugins
As well as the methods shown above, you can install a range 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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