In a separate blog post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use these to enhance your web site’s capabilities.
To view this article, go here:
In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn why plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to safely upgrade and delete plugins, and some plugin management tools if you plan to manage multiple WordPress sites.
Why Many Plugins Need Regular Updating
New WordPress versions are regularly released (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in older versions, as well as to improve existing features or introduce new functionality to users.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, there will typically be new new update notifications for WordPress plugins every.
The reason for this, is because most plugins for WordPress are created by 3rd-party developers, so sometimes features in the newly-released WordPress version conflict with plugins that were developed and tested with a previous version. Whenever this happens, there is a potential for problems 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 required). All you need to do as a website owner, is keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is really simple to do.
Keeping your plugins regularly updated and deleting old plugins you no longer use is an essential aspect of good WordPress management and helps to avoid potential conflicts and errors.
The WordPress tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins without touching web code.
How To Update And Delete Plugins In WordPress – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress provides a few ways to inform you when plugins need updating.
For example, you can immediately see how many plugins are out-of-date from your Site’s Dashboard simply by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
In the example below, you can see that nine plugins need updating …
You can also view how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Toolbar (in the example below, you can again see that nine plugins have to be updated) …
The Plugins screen (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 section provides links to the plugin developer pages and gives you the option to update the plugin individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by showing you how to upgrade individual WP plugins.
How To Update WordPress Plugins Individually
Always make a complete backup of your site files and database before updating your website.
From your dashboard menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
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 site …
(WordPress Plugins Section)
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 screen and enter a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show up on the screen by default, i.e. “999”), then click Apply …
Your Plugins page will now be made more manageable with a page scrolling 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 (inactive vs. active and outdated vs up-to-date) …
Plugins that need updating display the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] available” …
Find the plugin that needs updating and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides streamlined plugin updates, so that updating your plugins happens “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat the above process for all plugins on your site that need updating, 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 bulk.
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Now that you know how to upgrade plugins individually, the next step is to learn how to upgrade a bunch of WP plugins simultaneously.
Bulk-Updating Plugins
To update multiple WordPress plugins in a single operation 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 …
Click the checkbox in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to update by checking its box …
In the Bulk Actions drop-down menu at the top of the page, select Update …
And then click Apply …
Your selected plugins will automatically begin to update …
After your plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to the Plugins area, or select a different section of your dashboard …
Once your plugins are all up-to-date, any plugin alerts disappear (i.e. the “at-a-glance” indicators and “There is a new version of XYZ plugin available” notices no longer display on your screen, toolbar and menus) …
All plugins have now been updated!
(When your site uses the latest version of all plugins, notification icons do not display)
Now that you know how to upgrade your plugins, let’s take a look at how to delete plugins safely from your WordPress site or blog.
How To Delete Plugins
As part of good site management practices, it’s a good idea to uninstall inactive plugins. This can help conserve resource usage and also help to reduce potential problems.
In this section, you will learn how to safely uninstall unused plugins from your site.
We strongly recommend creating 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 restore your site.
To delete a plugin, go to your WP admin menu and click on Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins area, find the plugin you want to delete and make sure it is deactivated.
Hint: Inactive plugins are listed 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 going any further …
Next, click Delete …
If you want to review a list of all the files that will be deleted before taking the next step, then click on the “Click to view entire list of files which will be deleted” link in the “Delete Plugin” screen …
All files belonging to the plugin selected for removalwill be listed on your screen …
If you are absolutely certain about going ahead and deleting the plugin files, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugin(s) will be removed from your server …
How To Safely Delete Multiple Plugins Simultaneously
You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be removed.
Note: To delete any plugins that are presently 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 checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …
Next, choose Deactivate from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …
Click the Apply button …
The 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 …
Select all of the plugins you want to delete by either placing a tick next to their checkbox, or click on the check box next to the Plugin column header to select and delete all inactive plugins …
Once you have ticked all the check boxes next to the plugins that you want deleted, select Delete from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …
Click the Apply button …
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 would like 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 …
Useful WordPress Tools For Managing WordPress Plugins
As well as the methods shown above, you can use other WordPress plugins that let you manage your plugins.
PLUGIN CENTRAL
Plugin Central is a Free WordPress plugin that helps you manage your plugins by allowing you to install plugins directly, displays the status of plugins in need of update in the Admin area and lets you update many plugins at once with a single mouse-click …
For more details about this plugin, go here:
Managing WordPress Plugins On Multiple Sites
Whenever plugin updates get released, the best practice is to upgrde the plugin as soon as possible.
What if you have multiple sites using the same plugin? Normally, you would need to login to your sites one by one and then update the plugin from that site’s dashboard. If you plan to manage multiple sites, this process can take quite a while!
WordPress Power User Tip: If you manage multiple WordPress sites or blogs, you can install, update or uninstall plugins on all of your sites automatically and simultaneously using a number of WordPress management tools.
Here are a few WordPress management tools that are worth knowing about:
Jetpack Manage – Single WP Dashboard Management
The Jetpack plugin is a multifunctional WordPress plugin that provides users with a wide range of added functionality, allowing self-hosted WordPress site owners to benefit from WordPress.com’s infrastructure and take advantage of things like stats reporting, easy social sharing, and many other features.
(The Jetpack Plugin lets you access a range of powerful WordPress features)
One of these features is “Manage”.
Jetpack Manage allows you to manage your WordPress sites from a single interface.
With Manage, you can update plugins, set plugins to automatically update, and activate or deactivate plugins on a site-by-site basis or all at once, whether you’re on your PC, tablet, or smart phone.
Visit this site to download the plugin:
ManageWP
(ManageWP is a very popular WordPress management tool for multiple WordPress sites)
ManageWP lets you easily manage all your sites from one central location, including upgrades, backups, security and more. The application features easy and intuitive one-click updates and instant login access to your sites.
Go here to download the plugin:
WP Pipeline.com
(With WP Pipeline, you can update all of your WordPress sites, plugins and themes from a single WP installation)
WP Pipeline works in a similar way to ManageWP, but you only have to pay once to access the software. It lets you control and organize your entire online WordPress presence and perform multiple updates from one single dashboard.
Go here to download and use the plugin:
Congratulations! Now you know how to automatically update and uninstall WordPress plugins via the WordPress admin dashboard.
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