How To Update WordPress Plugins

Learn how to easily update all of your plugins inside your WordPress dashboard…

Updating And Deleting Plugins From The DashboardIn another post, we provide an overview of what plugins are all about and how you can use these to increase your website’s capabilities.

You can read this article here:

In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping all WordPress plugins up-to-date, how to automatically upgrade and delete your WordPress plugins, and some great tips to help you better manage your plugins if you plan to run or manage multiple WordPress sites or blogs.

Why Plugins Need Updating

New versions of WordPress are frequently being released (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in previous releases, and to improve existing features.

Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, you can expect to see at least some new updates for plugins every.

This is because most WordPress plugins are created by external developers, so sometimes the code in the newly-released WordPress version conflict with plugins that were developed and tested with a previous version. When this happens, there is a potential for conflicts to sometimes occur.

Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are quite proactive when it comes to ensuring that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if updating is required). All you need to do as a WordPress user, is maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is very quick, simple and easy to do.

Important

Keeping your plugins up-to-date and deleting old plugins you no longer need is an essential aspect of good WordPress management and helps to avoid errors or conflicts.

The WordPress tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins in the dashboard without requiring web coding knowledge or skills.

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely – Tutorial

WordPress employs a number of different ways to let users know when plugins need updating.

For example, you can tell immediately how many plugins are out-of-date inside your WP Dashboard by looking at the “Plugins” menu.

For example, in the screenshot below, nine plugins are out of date and need to be updated …

Updating And Deleting WordPress Plugins

You can also view how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Administration Toolbar (the example below shows that several plugins need to be updated) …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

The Plugins page (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also notifies you about plugins that need to be updated …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins In WordPress

In addition to providing information about plugins that have available updates, the Plugins page provides links to the plugin download pages and gives you the option to update your plugin individually or in bulk …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

Let’s start by showing you how to upgrade plugins one at a time.

Upgrade Plugins Individually

Warning

We strongly recommend making a full backup of your data and files before making any changes to your website.

In your dashboard menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins

How To Upgrade And Delete WordPress Plugins In The Dashboard

The “Plugins” screen will display in your browser. This table of plugins can be quite long depending on the number of plugins you have installed in your blog …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely

(Plugins Section)

Useful Tip

Notes:

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 …

Upgrading And Deleting WordPress Plugins

Your Plugins page will now be made more manageable with a pagination feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search” feature …

How To Update And Delete Plugins

You will see information about plugins in different backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (active vs. inactive and up-to-date vs. out-of-date) …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely In WordPress

Plugins that need updating show the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Insert Plugin Name] available”

How To Automatically Update And Delete WordPress Plugins

Find the plugin that needs updating and click on the update now link …

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins In Your Dashboard

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 takes place with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins screen …

Updating And Deleting Plugins

Repeat this process for all plugins on your site that need to be updated, or refer to the section below if you have several plugins that are out-of-date and would like to upgrade them all in one simple operation.

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Now that you know how to update plugins one at a time, it’s time to learn how to update many plugins simultaneously.

How To Bulk-Update Plugins

To update multiple plugins in one go directly inside your dashboard, go to the “Plugins” page and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …

Upgrading And Deleting WordPress Plugins Safely Inside Your WordPress Dashboard

Tick the checkbox in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to update by checking their individual boxes …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

In the Bulk Actions pull-down menu above the table of plugins, select Update

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins From Your Dashboard

Click Apply

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins

Your selected plugins will automatically begin to update …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins

After all plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to the Plugins area, or select another option from the WP admin menu …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

Once your plugins are all up-to-date, the update reminders disappear (i.e. the “at-a-glance” indicators and “There is a new version of XYZ plugin available” notices no longer display) …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Safely In WordPress

You have updated all plugins on your site!

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely

(When your plugins are all up-to-date, update messages do not display)

Now that you know how to automatically upgrade WordPress plugins, let’s show you how to safely uninstall plugins safely from your WordPress blog or website.

Deleting Plugins

It’s a good idea to uninstall inactive plugins. This can help to decrease resources on your server and also helps to eliminate problems.

In this section, we show you how to safely delete unused plugins from your blog or site.

Warning

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 remove a plugin, go to your admin menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins

In the Plugins page, find the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is inactive.

Hint: Inactive plugins appear in a different background color than active plugins and display an “Activate” link below the plugin name …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely

If the plugin is active, then click on Deactivate before going any further …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely In WordPress

Click on Delete

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins In WordPress

If you want to review a list of all the files that will be deleted before going ahead with the next step, then click on the “Click to view entire list of files which will be deleted” link in the “Delete Plugin” section …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins

A complete list of files belonging to the plugin selected for removalwill display on your screen …

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins In WordPress

If you are certain about going ahead and deleting the selected plugin, click on the Yes, Delete these files button …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

The selected plugin(s) will be deleted from your WordPress installation …

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely In WordPress

Deleting Several Plugins At Once

You can delete all inactive plugins at once, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be deleted.

Useful Info

Note: To delete any plugins that are currently 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 check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …

Upgrading And Deleting WordPress Plugins

Next, choose Deactivate from the Bulk Actions drop-down menu …

How To Update And Delete Plugins

Click Apply

Updating And Deleting WordPress Plugins

Your selected plugins will be deactivated …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely In WordPress

Once you have deactivated these plugins, click on the Inactive link on the menu at the top of the page …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely

Tick the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to remove by checking its box …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Inside Your Dashboard

Once you have ticked all the check boxes next to the plugins that you want to delete, choose Delete from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …

Updating And Deleting WordPress Plugins In Your WordPress Dashboard

Click the Apply button …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins In WordPress

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 proceed to the next step and remove all of the plugins listed …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely Inside Your WordPress Admin Dashboard

The plugins will be deleted …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins In The WordPress Admin Dashboard

WordPress Management Tools For WP Plugins

In addition to the methods shown above, you can install a range of tools that let you manage your WordPress plugins.

Health Check & troubleshooting

Health Check & Troubleshooting WordPress plugin
Health Check identifies common problems and helps you troubleshoot plugin and theme conflicts.

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

WPMU DEV's The Hub - Unlimited WordPress Site Management
WPMU DEV’s The Hub – Unlimited WordPress Site Management

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.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Updates menu

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.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Updates menu

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.

The Hub - Update notifications.
This feature can help you save a lot of time updating multiple WordPress sites, especially when WordPress releases a new version of its software.

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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