In a separate blog post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use plugins to increase your site’s capabilities.
You can view this article here:
In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping plugins up-to-date, how to safely update and remove plugins, and discover useful plugin management tools if you plan to run multiple WordPress sites or blogs.
Why Your WordPress Plugins Need Upgrading
New versions of WordPress are regularly released (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in older software versions, and to improve existing features or introduce new ones.
Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, you can expect to see at least some new new update notifications for WordPress plugins each time a new version of WordPress is announced.
This is because most WordPress plugins 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. Whenever this happens, there is a potential for conflicts to sometimes develop.
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 needed). All you need to do as a website owner, is just keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is really easy and simple to do.
Keeping your plugins up-to-date and deleting old plugins you no longer use is an essential aspect of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid any potential problems or errors.
The WordPress step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins in the dashboard without web coding skills or knowledge necessary.
Updating And Deleting Plugins From Your WordPress Admin Dashboard – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress provides a number of different methods to let users know when plugins need updating.
For example, you can see ‘at a glance’ how many plugins need updating as soon as you log into your Administration site by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, nine WP plugins have older versions that need to be updated …
You can also see how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Admin Toolbar (as shown below, several plugins require updating) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you what plugins need to be updated …
As well as providing information about which plugins have updates available, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin developer sites and gives you the option to update the plugins individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by showing you how to upgrade WP plugins individually.
How To Update Plugins One At A Time
We recommend performing a full backup of your site files and database before updating your blog or website.
In your main menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” page will display in your browser. This table of plugins can be quite long depending on how many plugins you have added to your blog …
(Plugins Section)
Useful Information:
If you have too many plugins installed and would like to make this section more manageable, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins screen and type in a smaller number of items per page (by default, all plugins display on the screen), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
Your Plugins section 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 “Plugin Search” feature …
You will see plugin information 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 updating have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [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 updating process, so that updating your plugins takes place “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat the above process for any other 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 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 upgrade several WP plugins simultaneously.
How To Update Several WP Plugins Simultaneously
To upgrade multiple 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 …
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 its box …
In the Bulk Actions drop-down menu at the top of the page, select Update …
And then click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will begin to update automatically …
Once all plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to the Plugins section, or choose another option from the dashboard menu …
Once all plugins are up-to-date, the update reminders 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) …
All plugins are now up-to-date!
(When plugins on your site are all up-to-date, notification icons do not display)
Now that you know how to update your plugins, let’s take a look at how to remove plugins safely from your blog or website.
Deleting WP Plugins
As part of smart WordPress management practices, it’s a good idea to uninstall plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This can conserve resources on your server and also helps to eliminate causes of problems.
In this section, you will learn how to delete unused plugins from your site.
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 delete a plugin, go to your admin menu and choose Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins area, find the plugin you want to delete and make sure it is inactive.
Hint: Inactive plugins use 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 going any further …
Click on Delete …
If you want to review a list of 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” section …
A complete list of files associated with the plugin that you are about to remove will display on your screen …
If you are certain that you would like to proceed and delete these plugin, click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugins and related files will be deleted …
Deleting Several WordPress Plugins Simultaneously
You can delete all inactive plugins at once, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be cleared.
Note: To delete any plugins that are currently active, you 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 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” area and click on the Inactive link on the main menu …
Tick the checkbox in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to remove by checking its box …
Once you have selected all 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 be displayed 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 go ahead and remove all of the selected plugins …
All plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
Practical Management Tools For Plugins
As well as the methods shown above, you can install 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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