In another blog post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use these to easily increase your website’s capabilities.
To view this article, go here:
In this tutorial you will learn why WordPress plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to upgrade and remove your WordPress plugins, and practical plugin management tips if you need to own or manage multiple WordPress sites or blogs.
Why Your Plugins Need Frequent Updating
The WordPress software is constantly updated (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in earlier versions, as well as to improve existing features or introduce new functionality to WordPress users.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, there will typically be new updates for WordPress plugins each time a new WordPress version is made available.
The reason for this, is because most plugins for WordPress are created by third-party developers, so sometimes the code in the new WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were developed 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 making sure that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if needed). All you need to do as a website owner, is keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is very simple and easy to do.
Keeping your plugins up-to-date and removing old plugins you no longer use is part of good WordPress management and helps to avoid potential errors or problems.
The WordPress step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins safely in your WordPress dashboard without web coding knowledge or skills needed.
Updating And Deleting Plugins In WordPress – Tutorial
WordPress employs several methods 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 Administration panel just by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
In the screenshot below, you can see that 9 WP plugins have older versions that need updating …
You can also check how many plugins need to be updated from your WordPress Admin Toolbar (the example below shows that nine plugins should be brought up to date) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you which plugins need updating …
In addition to providing information about which plugins have updates available, the Plugins screen provides links to the plugin download sites and gives you the option to update the plugins with one-click …
Let’s start by learning how to upgrade WP plugins individually.
Upgrade Single WordPress Plugins
We strongly recommend making a complete backup of your site files and database before updating your blog or website.
In your WP admin menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” section will display in your browser. This list of plugins can be quite lengthy depending on the number of plugins you have added to your site …
(WordPress 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 area and enter a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show up on the page by default), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
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” field …
WordPress displays information about plugins in different color backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (inactive vs. active and up-to-date vs. out-of-date) …
Plugins that need updating have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Insert Plugin Name] available” …
Select the plugin that needs updating 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 updating your plugins happens with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat this process for all plugins on your site that need updating, or refer to the section below if you have many plugins that are out-of-date and would like to update all plugins at the same time.
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Now that you know how to upgrade one plugin at a time, the next step is to learn how to upgrade several WordPress plugins simultaneously.
Bulk-Updating Plugins
To bulk-update WP plugins from your admin area, go to the “Plugins” screen and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Tick the checkbox in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to upgrade 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 begin the update process …
After all plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to your Plugins area, or select another option from the WP admin menu …
Once your plugins are all 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 on your screen, toolbar and menus) …
You have updated all plugins on your site!
(When plugins on your site are all up-to-date, notification icons do not display)
Now that you know how to automatically update WordPress plugins, let’s take a look at how to safely delete plugins safely from your WordPress site or blog.
Deleting Plugins
Occasionally, you may choose to delete plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This helps to reduce resource usage and also helps to eliminate causes of problems.
In this section, we show you how to safely remove unused plugins from your WordPress blog or 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 restore your site.
To remove a plugin, go to your admin menu and click on Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins page, find the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is inactive.
Hint: Inactive plugins have 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 …
Click Delete …
If you need to have a look at 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” page …
All files associated with the plugin selected for removalwill display on your screen …
If you are sure about going ahead and deleting the plugin files, click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugins and related files will be deleted …
How To Safely Delete Several WordPress Plugins In Bulk
You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins on your site, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be uninstalled.
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 checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …
Once you have done this, select 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 …
Click the check box 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 dropdown menu …
Click the Apply button …
A list of all selected plugins will show up 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 sure that you want to proceed to the next step and remove all of the plugins listed …
Your plugins will be deleted …
Managing WP Plugins
As well as the methods shown above, you can install a range of 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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