In a separate blog post, we provide an overview of what WordPress plugins are all about and how you can use these to easily add new features or functionality to your website or blog with no coding skills required.
You can read this article here:
In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping all plugins up-to-date, how to safely upgrade and uninstall plugins from your site, and some great plugin management tools if you currently run or manage multiple WordPress sites.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Your WordPress Plugins Need To Be Upgraded
The WordPress software is regularly updated (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in previous software releases, 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 updates for WordPress plugins each time a new WordPress version is released.
This is because most WordPress plugins are created by external developers, so sometimes code in the newly-released WordPress version conflict with plugins that were developed for a previous version. When this happens, conflicts can sometimes develop.
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 needed). All you have to do as a website owner, is keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is very quick, simple and easy to do.
Keeping your WordPress plugins regularly updated and removing old plugins you no longer use is an essential aspect of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid any potential errors and problems.
The tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete WordPress plugins in your dashboard without requiring web coding skills or knowledge.
How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete WordPress Plugins Safely – Tutorial
WordPress uses several ways to let users know when plugins on their site need updating.
For example, you can immediately see how many plugins are out-of-date inside your Site’s Dashboard simply by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
In the screenshot below, you can see that 9 WordPress plugins have older versions that need to be updated …
You can also check how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Admin Toolbar (in the screenshot below, you can see how many plugins have to be updated) …
The Plugins page (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also notifies you about plugins that need updating …
As well as providing information about which plugins have available updates, the Plugins page 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.
How To Update Individual Plugins
We recommend performing a full backup of your site files and database before updating your blog or website.
From your dashboard menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
You will be taken to the “Plugins” section. The page can be quite long depending on how many plugins you have installed on your blog …
(WordPress Plugins Page)
Useful Tips:
If you have too many plugins and would like to reduce the number of plugins showing on the screen, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins page and enter a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show up on the screen by default, i.e. “999”), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
Your Plugins area will now be made more manageable with a page scrolling feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Plugin Search” function …
WordPress displays plugin information in different backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (active vs. inactive and outdated vs up-to-date) …
Plugins that require updating display the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Insert Plugin Name] available” …
Locate the plugin that you want to update and click on the update now link …
WordPress has done away with the loading screen when updating plugins and streamlined the plugin update process, so that the process of updating your plugins happens with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat the above process for all plugins on your site that need updating, or see the section below if you have a number of 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 upgrade plugins one at a time, let’s show you how to bulk-update WordPress plugins.
Bulk-Updating WordPress Plugins
To upgrade multiple WP plugins simultaneously 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 check box 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 pull-down menu above the plugin table, select Update …
Click Apply …
Your selected plugins will automatically begin to update …
Once your plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to your Plugins area, or choose another option from the WP dashboard menu …
Once all plugins are up-to-date, the plugin notifications 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 your plugins are up-to-date, the notification icons disappear)
Now that you know how to update WP plugins, let’s show you how to safely remove plugins safely from your site.
How To Delete Plugins
As part of smart WordPress management practices, it’s a good idea to remove inactive plugins. This can reduce resource usage and also eliminate problems.
In this section, you will learn how to safely deactivate and delete unused plugins from your WordPress blog or site.
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 reinstall your site.
To delete a plugin, go to your WP admin menu and choose Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins page, locate the plugin you want to delete and make sure it is deactivated.
Hint: Inactive plugins have 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 with your plugin deletion …
Next, click on Delete …
If you need to review a list of 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 …
All files associated with the plugin selected for removalwill be listed on your screen …
If you are positively certain that you want to go ahead and delete the selected plugin files, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugin(s) will be removed from your WordPress installation …
How To Safely Bulk-Delete WP Plugins
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 the Apply button …
The selected plugins will be deactivated …
Once you have deactivated these plugins, click on the Inactive link on the menu at the top of the page …
Select all of the plugins you want to delete by either placing a tick next to their check box, or click on the check box next to the Plugin column header to select and delete all inactive plugins …
Once you have ticked all the check boxes next to the plugins that you want deleted, select Delete from the Bulk Actions dropdown 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 sure that you would like to go ahead and remove all of the plugins listed …
All plugins will be deleted …
Useful WordPress Tools For Managing Plugins
In addition to the methods shown above, you can install WordPress plugins to 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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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)