In a previous post, we provide an overview of what WordPress plugins are all about and how you can use these to easily enhance your website’s functionality.
To read the article, go here:
In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn why plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to update and delete plugins, and discover some tips to help you better manage your plugins if you currently run multiple WordPress sites.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Your Plugins Need Regular Upgrading
The WordPress software is regularly updated (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in earlier versions, as well as to improve existing features or introduce new functionality to users.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, there will typically be new updates for plugins each time a new WordPress version is made available.
This is because most plugins for WordPress are created by 3rd-party developers, so sometimes the code in the new WordPress version conflict with plugins that were developed and tested with 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 fairly proactive when it comes to making sure that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if this is required). All you have to do as a website owner, is keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is very 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 potential problems and errors.
The WordPress step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins safely in your WP admin dashboard without requiring web programming knowledge.
How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Safely – Tutorial
WordPress provides several ways to inform you when plugins need updating.
For example, you can see how many plugins are out-of-date from your WordPress Dashboard just by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
In the example below, you can see that nine plugins need to be updated …
You can also see how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Toolbar (in the example below, you can see how many plugins require updating) …
The Plugins page (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also lets you know which plugins need to be updated …
In addition to providing information about plugins that have available updates, the Plugins screen provides links to the plugin download pages and gives you the option to update the plugin with one-click …
Let’s start by learning how to upgrade WordPress plugins individually.
Upgrading Plugins One At A Time
Always make a full backup of your data and files before updating your blog or website.
From your dashboard menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” section will display in your browser. The table of plugins can be quite lengthy depending on the number of plugins you have installed in your blog …
(Plugins Page)
Additional 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 type in a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show up on the page by default, i.e. “999”), then click Apply …
Your Plugins area will now be reduced in size with a page scrolling feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Plugin Search” box …
WordPress displays plugin information in different color 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 [Plugin] available” …
Select the plugin that needs to be updated and click on the update now link …
WordPress has done away with the loading screen when updating plugins and streamlined the plugin updating process, so that the process of updating your plugins happens “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins screen …
Repeat this 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 update all plugins at once.
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Now that you know how to update individual WP plugins, the next step is to learn how to bulk-update WP plugins.
How To Upgrade Various Plugins Simultaneously
To update multiple WordPress plugins at the same time 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 …
Click on the check box in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to upgrade by checking its box …
In the Bulk Actions drop down menu at the top of the page, select Update …
Click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will begin to update automatically …
Once all plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to the Plugins section, or choose another option from the dashboard menu …
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 have now been updated!
(When plugins on your site are up-to-date, update notices no longer display)
Now that you know how to automatically upgrade WordPress inside your admin dashboard, let’s take a look at how to delete plugins from your blog or website.
How To Safely Remove Plugins
It’s a good idea to delete plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This can help decrease resource usage and also eliminate problems.
In this section, we show you how to safely remove unused plugins from your site.
Always create 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 remove a plugin, go to your dashboard menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins area, find the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is inactive.
Hint: Inactive plugins are listed 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 continuing …
Next, click on Delete …
If you need to review a list of 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” page …
A complete list of files belonging to the plugin that you are about to remove will display on your screen …
If you are certain about going ahead and deleting the plugin files, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugins and related files will be deleted from your server …
Deleting Several Plugins At Once
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, your will 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 checkbox 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 the Apply button …
Your 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 only the plugins you want to delete by checking their individual boxes …
Once you have selected all of the plugins that you want to delete, choose Delete from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …
Click Apply …
A list of all selected plugins will show up 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 proceed to the next step and delete all of the selected plugins …
The selected plugins will be deleted …
Practical Management Tools For Plugins
As well as the methods shown above, you can use a range of third-party tools 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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