In another blog post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use these to easily add new features to your blog with no coding skills required.
You can view the article here:
In this tutorial you will learn why plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to safely update and delete plugins, and some great tips to help you better manage your plugins.
Why Your Plugins Need To Be Regularly Upgraded
WordPress regularly updates its software (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in earlier versions, and to improve existing features.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, you can expect to see at least some new new update notices for plugins every.
This is because most WordPress plugins are created by third-party developers, so sometimes code in the newly-released WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were built for a previous version. Whenever this happens, there is a potential for issues to sometimes occur.
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 this is required). All you need to do on your end, is simply keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is very quick, simple and easy to do.
Keeping your WordPress plugins up-to-date and removing old plugins you no longer need is part of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid any potential errors and problems.
The WordPress tutorial below explains how to upgrade and delete plugins with no web programming skills or knowledge needed.
How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely – Tutorial
WordPress has several ways to notify you when plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can see how many plugins need updating from your Site’s Dashboard simply by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
In the screenshot below, you can see that 9 plugins need updating …
You can also view how many plugins need updating from your WP Toolbar (the screenshot below shows 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 available updates, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin developer pages and gives you the option to update your plugins individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by showing you how to upgrade individual WP plugins.
Upgrading Single WordPress Plugins
Always make a backup of your website before making any upgrades to your website or blog.
From your admin menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” area will display in your browser. The list of plugins can run down your screen for some length, depending on how many plugins you have added to your site …
(The WordPress Plugins Section)
Useful Information:
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 area and enter a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show on the page by default, i.e. “999”), then click Apply …
Your Plugins section 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” feature …
WordPress displays plugin information in different backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (inactive vs. active and up-to-date vs. outdated) …
Plugins that require upgrading have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] available” …
Select the plugin that needs to be updated 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 this process for any other plugins on your site that need to be updated, or see 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 upgrade one plugin at a time, the next step is to learn how to update several WP plugins simultaneously.
How To Bulk-Upgrade Plugins
To upgrade multiple plugins in one go using the automatic update feature, go to the “Plugins” section and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Click the check box in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to update by checking their individual boxes …
In the Bulk Actions dropdown menu at the top of the page, choose Update …
Click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will begin to update automatically …
Once all updates have completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to your Plugins screen, or select another option from the admin menu …
Once all plugins are 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) …
All plugins have now been upgraded!
(When your site or blog uses the latest version of all plugins, notification icons disappear)
Now that you know how to update plugins, let’s take a look at how to remove plugins from your site.
How To Safely Delete Plugins
As part of good blog management practice, it’s a good idea to remove plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This helps to reduce resources on your server and eliminates causes of some problems.
In this section, you will learn how to delete unused plugins from your WordPress blog or site.
Always create 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 remove a plugin, go to your dashboard menu and choose Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins area, locate the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is deactivated.
Hint: Inactive plugins appear in a different colored background than active plugins and show an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, click on Deactivate before continuing …
Click Delete …
If you want 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” section …
The entire list of files belonging to the plugin that you are about to delete will be listed on your screen …
If you are positively sure about going ahead and deleting these plugin, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugins and related files will be removed from your WordPress installation …
How To Safely Bulk-Delete WP Plugins
You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins, 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 check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …
Next, select Deactivate from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …
Click Apply …
Your selected plugins will be deactivated …
To delete all or some of the inactive plugins, go to the “Plugins” area and click on the Inactive link on the main menu …
Select all of the plugins you want to delete by either placing a tick next to their check box, or click on the checkbox 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 sure that you would like to go ahead and remove all of the selected plugins …
All selected plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
WordPress Management Tools For Plugins
In addition to the methods shown above, you can install a number of third-party tools that let you manage your WordPress 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)