In another post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use plugins to easily enhance your site’s capabilities.
To read the article, go here:
In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn why plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to automatically update and uninstall plugins, and discover useful tips to help you better manage your plugins if you run or manage multiple WordPress sites or blogs.
Why Your Plugins Need Updating
WordPress frequently updates its software (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in earlier software releases, and to improve existing features or introduce new functionality to WordPress users.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, you can expect to see at least some new updates for plugins each time a new version of WordPress is announced.
This is because most plugins for WordPress are created by third-party developers, so sometimes the code in the new WordPress version conflict with plugins that were built for a previous version. When this happens, there is a potential for conflicts to sometimes develop.
Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are very 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 website owner, is just maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is very simple to do.
Keeping your WordPress plugins regularly updated and removing old plugins you no longer need is part of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid any errors and conflicts.
The tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete WordPress plugins safely without editing web code.
How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Safely – Tutorial
WordPress employs a number of different methods to alert users when plugins need updating.
For example, you can tell immediately how many plugins are out-of-date from your WordPress Dashboard simply by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that 9 plugins are out of date and need updating …
You can also tell how many plugins need updating from your WP Notification Toolbar (the screenshot below shows that several plugins need to be updated) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you what plugins 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 update individual WP plugins.
How To Upgrade WordPress Plugins Individually
We recommend performing a full backup of your website before upgrading your blog or website.
In your main menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” screen will display in your browser. The table of plugins can go down your page for some length, depending on the number of plugins you have added to your blog …
(Plugins Page)
Useful Information:
If you have too many plugins installed and would like to reduce the number of plugins displayed on your page, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins screen and type in a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show on the page by default), then click Apply …
Your Plugins page will now be reduced in size with a ’numbered pages’ feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Plugin Search” box …
WordPress displays information about plugins in different backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (active vs. inactive and out-of-date vs up-to-date) …
Plugins that require upgrading have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] available” …
Locate 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 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 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 one simple operation.
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Now that you know how to update one WP plugin at a time, it’s time to learn how to upgrade a bunch of plugins simultaneously.
Bulk-Upgrading WordPress Plugins
To bulk-upgrade plugins 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 checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to update by checking its box …
In the Bulk Actions dropdown menu above the plugin list, choose Update …
Click Apply …
Your selected plugins will automatically begin to update …
Once all plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to your Plugins screen, or choose a different section of your dashboard …
Once your plugins are all up-to-date, any plugin alerts 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 to their latest version!
(When your site uses the latest version of all plugins, update icons disappear)
Now that you know how to automatically update your plugins, let’s take a look at how to safely remove plugins safely from your WordPress site or blog.
How To Safely Delete WordPress Plugins
Occasionally, you may want to remove WP plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This can help to decrease resources on your server and helps to eliminate problems.
In this section, you will learn how to safely deactivate and 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 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 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 going any further …
Click on Delete …
If you would like to have a look at all the files that will be deleted before proceeding any further, then click on the “Click to view entire list of files which will be deleted” link in the “Delete Plugin” section …
All files associated with the plugin that you are about to delete will be listed on your screen …
If you are sure that you want to go ahead and delete the selected plugin files, click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugin(s) will be deleted from your WordPress installation …
How To Safely Delete Multiple WP Plugins In Bulk
You can delete all inactive plugins at once, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be deleted.
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 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 the Apply button …
Your selected plugins will be deactivated …
To delete all or some of the inactive plugins, go to the “Plugins” page and click on the Inactive link on the main menu …
Click on the check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to delete by checking their individual boxes …
Once you have selected all the plugins that you want deleted, specify Delete from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …
Click the Apply button …
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 absolutely sure that you want to go ahead and delete all of the selected plugins …
Your plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
Managing WordPress Plugins – Tools
In addition to the methods shown above, you can install other WordPress plugins 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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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)