In a previous article, we provide a detailed explanation of what WP plugins are all about and how you can use these to easily increase your web site’s functionality.
To view the article, go here:
In this step-by-step 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 useful tools to help you better manage your plugins.
Why Many Of Your WordPress Plugins Need Updating
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 versions, and to improve existing features.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, there will typically be new updates for plugins whenever WordPress distributes an updated version.
This is because most WordPress plugins 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. Whenever this happens, there is a potential for conflicts to 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 updating is needed). All you need to do on your end, is keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is very simple to do.
Keeping your WordPress plugins up-to-date and removing old plugins you no longer use is an essential aspect of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid errors and problems.
The step-by-step tutorial below explains how to upgrade and delete plugins safely inside your dashboard without touching web code.
How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress has a number of different ways to inform you when plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can tell immediately how many plugins are out-of-date from your Administration panel just by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
In the screenshot below, 9 WP plugins are out of date and need to be updated …
You can also view how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Administration Toolbar (in the screenshot below, you can see how many plugins need 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 updates available, the Plugins screen provides links to the plugin developer sites and gives you the option to update the plugins instantly …
Let’s start by showing you how to upgrade individual WP plugins.
How To Upgrade WordPress Plugins Individually
We strongly recommend performing a backup of your website before making any changes to your website or blog.
From your admin menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” section will display in your browser. This screen can be quite lengthy depending on the number of plugins you have installed in your site …
(Plugins Screen)
Tips:
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 page 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 made more manageable with a ’numbered pages’ feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search Installed Plugins” feature …
You will see information about plugins in different color backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (inactive vs. active and out-of-date vs up-to-date) …
Plugins in need of updating display the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin Name] available” …
Find the plugin that needs updating and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides smooth and simple plugin updates, so that updating your plugins takes place with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat this process for any other plugins on your site that need updating, or see the section below if you have several 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 individually, let’s show you how to upgrade multiple plugins simultaneously.
How To Bulk-Update Plugins
To bulk-upgrade plugins using the automatic upgrade feature, go to the “Plugins” screen and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Click the checkbox next to 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 pull-down menu above the list of plugins, choose Update …
Click Apply …
Your selected plugins will begin updating …
Once all upgrades are completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to your Plugins screen, or select another option from the admin 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” notices no longer display) …
You have updated all plugins on your site to their latest version!
(When your site or blog uses the latest version of all plugins, the notification icons no longer show)
Now that you know how to upgrade inside your admin dashboard, it’s time to learn how to safely remove plugins from your WordPress site.
How To Remove WP Plugins
At times, you may decide to remove plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This conserves resource usage and also eliminates problems.
In this section, we show you how to remove unused plugins from your site or blog.
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 reinstall your site.
To remove a plugin, go to your admin menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins area, locate the plugin you want to delete and make sure it is inactive.
Hint: Inactive plugins use a different background color than active plugins and show an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, then click on Deactivate before continuing …
Once you have deactivated the plugin, click Delete …
If you would like 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” page …
The entire list of files associated with the plugin that you are about to delete will display on your screen …
If you are positively certain about going ahead and deleting the plugin files, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugin(s) will be removed from your server …
How To Delete Several Plugins In Bulk
You can delete all inactive plugins at once, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be removed.
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) …
Once you have done this, choose Deactivate from the Bulk Actions dropdown 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 checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to delete by checking their individual boxes …
Once you have selected all of the plugins that you want to delete, specify Delete from the Bulk Actions drop-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 sure that you would like to go ahead and delete all of the plugins listed …
The plugins will be deleted …
WP Plugin Management – WordPress Tools
As well as the methods shown above, you can use a number of 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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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now