Tag: Upgrade WordPress Plugins

In another article, we explain what plugins are and how you can use these to easily extend your site’s capabilities.

To view this article, go here:

• WP Plugins Extend Your Site’s Features

In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn why plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to upgrade and remove plugins, and useful tools to help you better manage your plugins if you plan to run multiple WordPress sites.

Why Some Plugins Need To Be Frequently Upgraded

New versions of WordPress are regularly released (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in older software versions, and 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 plugins every.

This is because most plugins for WordPress are created by 3rd-party developers, so sometimes the code in the new WordPress version conflict with plugins that were built for a previous version. Whenever this happens, issues can 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 this is needed). All you have to do as a website owner, is simply keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is really simple, quick and easy to do.

Keeping your WordPress plugins regularly updated and deleting old plugins you no longer need is an essential aspect of good WordPress management and helps to avoid errors and problems.

The WordPress step-by-step tutorial below explains how to upgrade and delete plugins without touching web code.

Updating And Deleting Plugins – Tutorial

WordPress utilizes a few ways to inform you when plugins need updating.

For example, you can tell immediately how many plugins need to be updated as soon as you log into your Admin area just by looking at the “Plugins” menu.

For example, in the screenshot below, nine plugins are out of date and need updating …

You can also view how many plugins need to be updated from your WordPress Toolbar (in the example below, you can see how many plugins require updating) …

The Plugins page (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also lets you know which plugins need to be updated …

As well as providing information about which plugins have updates available, the Plugins screen provides links to the plugin developer pages and gives you the option to update the plugins with one-click …

Let’s start by learning how to update individual WP plugins.

Update Plugins Individually

Always make a complete backup of your data and files before making any upgrades to your website.

From your dashboard menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …

The “Plugins” section will display in your browser. The list of plugins can go down your screen for a while, depending on how many plugins you have installed in your site …

(The WordPress Plugins Page)

Tips:

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 page and enter a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show up on the screen 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” function …

You will see information about plugins in different backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (inactive vs. active and up-to-date vs. outdated) …

Plugins in need of updating have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Insert Plugin Name] available” …

Find the plugin that needs updating and click on the update now link …

WordPress provides streamlined plugin updates, so that the process of updating your plugins takes place “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins screen …

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 update all plugins in one simple operation.

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Now that you know how to upgrade WP plugins one at a time, it’s time to learn how to bulk-upgrade plugins.

Bulk-Updating WP Plugins

To update multiple plugins in one go directly inside your dashboard, go to the “Plugins” page and click on the Update Available 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 update by checking its box …

In the Bulk Actions dropdown menu above your plugin table, select Update …

And then click Apply …

Your selected plugins will automatically begin to update …

Once all updates are finished, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to the Plugins area, or go to a different section of your dashboard …

Once all plugins are 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) …

All plugins have now been updated!

(When your site or blog uses the latest version of all plugins, update icons no longer show)

Now that you know how to automatically update WordPress in the dashboard, let’s take a look at how to safely remove plugins safely from your blog or website.

Deleting Plugins

Occasionally, you may decide to delete WP plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This can help decrease resources on your server and also helps to eliminate causes of problems.

In this section, we show you how to uninstall unused plugins from your WordPress blog or 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 dashboard menu and click on Plugins > Installed Plugins …

In the Plugins screen, locate the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is inactive.

Hint: Inactive plugins appear in 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 proceeding with your plugin deletion …

Next, click Delete …

If you want to browse 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 …

A complete list of files belonging to the plugin that you are about to delete will display on your screen …

If you are absolutely sure about going ahead and deleting the plugin, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …

The selected plugins and related files will be removed from your server …

Bulk-Deleting Plugins

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 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 checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …

Once you have done this, specify 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 check box in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to remove by checking its box …

Once you have selected all of 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 display 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 would like to proceed to the next step and delete all of the plugins listed …

All plugins will be deleted …

Managing WordPress Plugins – Useful WordPress Tools

In addition to the methods shown above, you can use 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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