In another article, we provide a detailed explanation of what WordPress plugins are about and how you can use these to increase your blog’s functionality.
You can read the article here:
In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping all plugins up-to-date, how to automatically upgrade and delete your WordPress plugins, and discover practical tools to help you better manage your plugins if you run multiple WordPress sites or blogs.
Why Your Plugins Need Frequent Upgrading
The WordPress software is regularly updated (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in earlier releases, as well as to improve existing features.
Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, you can expect to see at least some new new update notices for WordPress plugins every.
This is because most plugins for WordPress are created by 3rd-party 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 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 updating is required). All you need to do on your end, is just maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is really quick, simple and easy to do.
Keeping your WordPress plugins regularly updated and deleting old plugins you no longer need is an essential aspect of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid any errors or problems.
The step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete WordPress plugins safely from your dashboard without requiring web coding or programming skills.
How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Safely – Tutorial
WordPress provides a few ways to notify you when plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can instantly see how many plugins need to be updated inside your WP Dashboard just by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, nine WP plugins have older versions that need updating …
You can also see how many plugins need to be updated from your WordPress Toolbar (in the example below, you can again see that 9 plugins should be updated) …
The Plugins page (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also notifies you about plugins that need to be updated …
In addition to 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 plugin individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by learning how to upgrade WP plugins individually.
Upgrading Plugins Individually
Always make a backup of your data and files before updating your blog or website.
In your main menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” page will display in your browser. The list of plugins can be quite long depending on the number of plugins you have added to your site …
(Plugins Page)
Tips:
If you have too many plugins and would like to reduce the number of plugins displayed on the screen, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins area and type in a smaller number of items per page (by default, all plugins display on the page), then click Apply …
Your Plugins section will now be reduced in size with a ’numbered pages’ feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search Plugins” feature …
You will see information about plugins 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 updating have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Insert Plugin Name] available” …
Find the plugin that needs to be updated and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides streamlined plugin updates, so that the process of updating your plugins happens “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins screen …
Repeat the above process for any other 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 upgrade all plugins in one simple operation.
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Now that you know how to upgrade one plugin at a time, it’s time to learn how to upgrade many plugins simultaneously.
Bulk-Upgrading WordPress Plugins
To bulk-upgrade WP plugins simultaneously directly inside your dashboard, go to the “Plugins” section 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 each plugin you want to upgrade by checking their individual boxes …
In the Bulk Actions dropdown menu at the top of the page, choose Update …
And then click Apply …
Your selected plugins will automatically begin to update …
After all plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to your Plugins section, or choose another option from the WordPress admin menu …
Once your plugins are all 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) …
You have updated all plugins on your site to their latest version!
(When your plugins are up-to-date, update notices disappear)
Now that you know how to automatically upgrade WP plugins, let’s show you how to safely delete plugins safely from your site.
Deleting Plugins
Occasionally, you may decide to delete plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This helps to decrease resource usage and also helps to eliminate causes of some problems.
In this section, we show you how to safely uninstall unused plugins from your WordPress site or blog.
Always create 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 select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins screen, find 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 display an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, then click on Deactivate before proceeding with your plugin deletion …
Click Delete …
If you would like to have a look at 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” screen …
The entire list of files associated with the plugin selected for removalwill display on your screen …
If you are absolutely certain that you want to go ahead and delete the selected plugin, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugin(s) will be removed from your WordPress installation …
How To 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 checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …
Next, specify Deactivate from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …
Click Apply …
All selected plugins will be deactivated …
To delete all or some of the inactive plugins on your site, go to the “Plugins” screen and click on the Inactive link in the Plugins menu …
Click the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to delete by checking its box …
Once you have ticked all the checkboxes next to the plugins that you want to delete, select Delete from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …
Click the Apply button …
A list of all selected plugins will be displayed 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 absolutely sure that you would like to go ahead and delete all of the plugins listed …
All plugins will be deleted …
Practical Management Tools For WP Plugins
In addition to the methods shown above, you can install WordPress plugins that help 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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