Tag: Upgrade WordPress Plugins

In another post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use plugins to expand your site’s functionality.

To read the article, go here:

• WP Plugins – Enhancing Your Blog’s Functionality

In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping all plugins up-to-date, how to easily update and remove your WordPress plugins, and useful tips to help you better manage your plugins if you currently run multiple WordPress sites.

Why Some Of Your Plugins Need Regular Updating

WordPress constantly updates its software (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in previous software releases, 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 plugins each time a new WordPress version is announced.

The reason for this, is because most plugins for WordPress are created by 3rd-party developers, so sometimes code in the new WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were developed for a previous version. When this happens, there is a potential for issues to sometimes occur.

Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are quite 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 simply keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is really easy and simple to do.

Keeping your plugins up-to-date and removing old plugins you no longer need is an essential aspect of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid problems or errors.

The WordPress step-by-step tutorial below explains how to upgrade and delete plugins without requiring coding knowledge or skills.

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Inside Your WordPress Dashboard – Step-By-Step Tutorial

WordPress has a number of different ways of letting users know when plugins on their site need to be updated.

For example, you can tell immediately how many plugins are out-of-date from your Administration panel by looking at the “Plugins” menu.

For example, in the screenshot below, 9 plugins need updating …

You can also tell how many plugins need to be updated from your WordPress Admin Toolbar (in the screenshot below, you can again see that 9 plugins should be brought up to date) …

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 sites and gives you the option to update the plugin with one-click …

Let’s start by showing you how to upgrade WordPress plugins individually.

Upgrading Single Plugins

Always make a complete backup of your site files and database before making any updates to your blog or website.

From your admin menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …

The “Plugins” screen will display in your browser. This screen can be quite long depending on the number of plugins you have installed in your blog …

(Plugins Screen)

Additional Info:

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 screen and type in a smaller number of items per page (by default, all plugins display on the screen), then click the ‘Apply’ button …

Your Plugins page will now be made more manageable with a pagination feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search Installed Plugins” feature …

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

Plugins that need updating show the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin Name] 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 takes place “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins screen …

Repeat the above process for any other plugins on your site that need updating, or see the section below if you have several plugins that are out-of-date and would like to upgrade them all in one simple operation.

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Now that you know how to upgrade individual WordPress plugins, the next step is to learn how to bulk-update WP plugins.

How To Update Several Plugins Simultaneously

To upgrade multiple plugins in one go 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 check box 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 pull-down menu above the plugin list, select Update …

And then click Apply …

The plugins you have selected will automatically begin to update …

After all updates are completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to the Plugins screen, or select another option from the dashboard menu …

Once your plugins are all up-to-date, the plugin notifications 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 upgraded to their latest versions!

(When your site uses the latest version of all plugins, update messages disappear)

Now that you know how to upgrade your in your WP dashboard, let’s show you how to remove plugins from your WordPress site or blog.

Deleting Plugins

It’s a good idea to remove plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This helps to reduce resources on your server and help to minimize potential problems.

In this section, we show you how to safely deactivate and delete unused plugins from your site or blog.

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 reinstall your site.

To remove a plugin, go to your main menu and choose Plugins > Installed Plugins …

In the Plugins page, 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 display an “Activate” link below the plugin name …

If the plugin is active, click on Deactivate before proceeding …

Click on Delete …

If you would like to browse 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” screen …

The entire list of files belonging to the plugin selected for deletionwill display on your screen …

If you are absolutely certain that you want to proceed and delete the plugin files, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …

The selected plugin(s) will be removed from your WordPress installation …

Bulk-Deleting Plugins

You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be deleted.

Note: To delete any plugins that are currently active, you 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 pull-down menu …

Click Apply …

The selected plugins will be deactivated …

To delete all or some of the inactive plugins on your site, go to the “Plugins” area and click on the Inactive link in the Plugins menu …

Tick the check box in 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 ticked all the checkboxes next to the plugins that you want to delete, select Delete from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …

Click Apply …

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 absolutely sure that you would like to go ahead and delete all of the plugins listed …

The selected plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …

Managing WP Plugins

In addition to the methods shown above, you can use 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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