In a previous blog post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use these to add new features or functionality to your website or blog without touching code.
To view this article, go here:
In this tutorial you will learn why WordPress plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to upgrade and remove plugins from your site, and discover some great plugin management tools if you currently own or manage multiple WordPress sites or blogs.
Why Many Of Your WordPress Plugins Need Updating
The WordPress software is constantly updated (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in earlier software releases, and to improve existing features.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, you can expect to see at least some new new update notifications for plugins each time a new version of WordPress is released.
The reason for this, is because most plugins for WordPress are created by third-party developers, so sometimes code in the new WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were created and tested to work with a previous version. When this happens, problems 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 required). All you have to do on your end, is simply maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is very simple, quick and easy to do.
Keeping your WordPress plugins up-to-date and deleting old plugins you no longer use is part of good WordPress management and helps to avoid any errors or problems.
The tutorial below explains how to upgrade and delete plugins safely in the dashboard without web coding knowledge or skills necessary.
Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely From Your WP Dashboard – Tutorial
WordPress has a number of different ways of letting you know when your 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For example, you can instantly see how many plugins are out-of-date as soon as you log into your Administration panel simply by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
In the example below, nine plugins need to be updated …
You can also check how many plugins need to be updated from your WordPress Admin Toolbar (as shown below, 9 plugins need to be updated) …
The Plugins page (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also notifies you about plugins that need updating …
In addition to providing information about which plugins have updates available, the Plugins page provides links to the plugin download pages and gives you the option to update your plugin with one-click …
Let’s start by showing you how to update WP plugins one at a time.
Upgrading WordPress Plugins Individually
We strongly recommend performing a complete backup of your website before updating your website or blog.
From your WP admin menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” page will display in your browser. The table of plugins can be quite long depending on the number of plugins you have installed in your site …
(The WordPress Plugins Page)
Useful 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 screen and enter a smaller number of items per page (by default, all plugins display on the page), then click Apply …
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 “Search” box …
WordPress displays information about plugins in different backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (active vs. inactive 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” …
Select the plugin that you want to update and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides simpler plugin updating, so that updating your plugins takes place with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat the above process for any other plugins on your site that need updating, or refer to the section below if you have many plugins that are out-of-date and would like to update them all at the same time.
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Now that you know how to update individual plugins, let’s show you how to upgrade several WP plugins simultaneously.
How To Upgrade Various WP Plugins
To upgrade multiple WP plugins at the same time 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 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 above your plugin table, select Update …
Click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will begin updating …
After all plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to the Plugins area, or choose another option from the WordPress dashboard menu …
Once all plugins are 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” notices no longer display on your screen, toolbar and menus) …
You have updated all plugins on your site!
(When your site or blog uses the latest version of all plugins, the notification icons disappear)
Now that you know how to upgrade plugins, let’s take a look at how to safely remove plugins from your WordPress site.
Deleting Plugins
As part of smart site management, it’s a good idea to uninstall plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This helps to decrease server resources and also help you avoid problems.
In this section, you will learn how to safely remove unused plugins from your 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 WP admin menu and choose Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins screen, locate 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 display an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, click on Deactivate before going any further …
Once you have deactivated the plugin, click 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” section …
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 about going ahead and deleting the plugin files, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugin(s) will be deleted …
Deleting Several Plugins At Once
You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be deleted.
Note: To delete any plugins that are currently 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 checkbox, 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 dropdown 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 checkbox, or click on the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select and delete all inactive plugins …
Once you have selected all of the plugins that you want deleted, choose Delete from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …
Click Apply …
A list of all selected plugins will display 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 sure that you want to proceed to the next step and remove all of the plugins listed …
Your selected plugins will be deleted …
Useful Management Tools For Plugins
As well as 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)