In another blog post, we provide a detailed explanation of what WordPress plugins are all about and how you can use plugins to easily expand your site’s capabilities.
To read the article, go here:
In this tutorial you will learn why WordPress plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to safely upgrade and remove plugins from your site, and discover useful tips to help you better manage your plugins.
Why Plugins Need To Be Frequently Updated
The WordPress software is constantly updated (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in previous 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 when new WordPress versions are announced.
The reason for this, is because most WordPress plugins are created by third-party developers, so sometimes code or features in the newly-released WordPress version conflict with plugins that were built for 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 fairly proactive when it comes to ensuring that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if updating is required). All you have to do on your end, is keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is really simple and easy to do.
Keeping your plugins regularly updated and deleting old plugins you no longer use is part of good WordPress management and helps to avoid errors and problems.
The tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins in WordPress without touching web code.
How To Update And Delete Plugins In WordPress – Tutorial
WordPress has several ways to alert users when plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can instantly see how many plugins need updating as soon as you log into your Admin area by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that 9 WordPress plugins are out of date and need updating …
You can also tell how many plugins need updating from your WP Admin Toolbar (as shown below, several plugins need updating) …
The Plugins screen (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 download sites and gives you the option to update your plugin individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by showing you how to update WordPress plugins individually.
Upgrade Plugins Individually
We recommend making a complete backup of your data and files before updating your website or blog.
In your dashboard menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” area will display in your browser. The list of plugins can run down your screen for a while, depending on the number of plugins you have installed on your blog …
(Plugins Page)
Additional 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 area and enter a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show up on the page by default, i.e. “999”), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
Your Plugins page 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” field …
You will see plugin information in different color backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (active vs. inactive and up-to-date vs. outdated) …
Plugins that require updating have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] 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 update process, so that the process of updating your plugins happens “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat the above process for all plugins on your site that need to be updated, or see the section below if you have a number of 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 one plugin at a time, the next step is to learn how to bulk-upgrade WP plugins.
How To Bulk-Upgrade WP Plugins
To bulk-update plugins simultaneously directly inside your dashboard, go to the “Plugins” screen and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Click on the checkbox in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to update by checking their individual boxes …
In the Bulk Actions pull-down menu at the top of the page, choose Update …
Click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will automatically begin to update …
After all updates have completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to your Plugins section, or choose a different section of your dashboard …
Once all plugins are 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) …
All plugins are now up-to-date!
(When your site or blog uses the latest version of all plugins, the notification icons disappear)
Now that you know how to update your plugins, it’s time to learn how to safely delete plugins safely from your site or blog.
Deleting WordPress Plugins
At times, you may choose to remove WP plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This can help to conserve resource usage and also eliminates problems.
In this section, we show you how to safely delete 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 reinstall your site.
To remove a plugin, go to your dashboard menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins screen, find the plugin you want to delete and make sure it is deactivated.
Hint: Inactive plugins use a different colored background than active plugins and show an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, then click on Deactivate before proceeding with your plugin deletion …
Next, click on Delete …
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” page …
The entire list of files associated with the plugin that you are about to delete will be listed on your screen …
If you are absolutely sure about going ahead and deleting the plugin files, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugin(s) will be deleted from your server …
Deleting Multiple Plugins Simultaneously
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 drop down menu …
Click Apply …
Your 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 …
Click on the checkbox next to 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 pull-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 absolutely sure that you want to proceed to the next step and remove all of the plugins listed …
All plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
Managing WordPress Plugins – Tools
As well as the methods shown above, you can install a range of 3rd-party tools that let 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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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum