In a previous blog post, we provide a detailed explanation of what WordPress plugins are about and how you can use these to easily add new features to your website with no technical skills required.
To read the article, go here:
In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping plugins up-to-date, how to upgrade and remove your WordPress plugins, and discover practical plugin management tips if you manage multiple WordPress sites or blogs.
Why Many Of Your WordPress Plugins Need To Be Updated
New WordPress versions are regularly released (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in previous releases, as well as 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 new update notices for WordPress plugins every.
This is because most WordPress plugins are created by third-party developers, so sometimes code in the newly-released WordPress version conflict with plugins that were developed 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 fairly proactive when it comes to ensuring that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if this is needed). All you have to do as a WordPress user, is just keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is very easy and simple to do.
Keeping your plugins up-to-date and deleting old plugins you no longer use is an essential aspect of good WordPress management and helps to avoid any conflicts and errors.
The tutorial below explains how to upgrade and delete WordPress plugins safely inside your dashboard without requiring web coding or programming skills.
How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Inside The Dashboard – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress employs several ways to let users know when plugins need updating.
For example, you can instantly see how many plugins are out-of-date as soon as you log into your Admin area by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that nine plugins have older versions that need to be updated …
You can also check how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Notification Toolbar (the example below shows how many plugins have to be updated) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you how many plugins need updating …
In addition to providing information about plugins that have updates available, the Plugins screen provides links to the plugin download sites and gives you the option to update the plugin instantly …
Let’s start by learning how to upgrade plugins individually.
How To Upgrade Plugins Individually
We strongly recommend making a complete backup of your website before making any upgrades to your website or blog.
From your main menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” page will display in your browser. The list of plugins can flow down your screen for a while, depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site …
(Plugins Section)
Useful 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 type in a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show on the screen by default), then click Apply …
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” function …
WordPress displays plugin information in different color backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (active vs. inactive and outdated vs up-to-date) …
Plugins that require upgrading display the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] available” …
Find 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 updating process, so that updating your plugins happens with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat the above process for any other plugins on your site that need to be updated, or see the section below if you have many 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 one plugin at a time, let’s show you how to bulk-upgrade WP plugins.
Bulk-Upgrading WordPress Plugins
To bulk-upgrade plugins simultaneously using the automatic upgrade feature, go to the “Plugins” screen 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 upgrade by checking their individual boxes …
In the Bulk Actions drop down menu above the table of plugins, select Update …
Click Apply …
Your selected plugins will begin to update automatically …
Once all updates have been completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to your Plugins section, or select another option from the main menu …
Once your plugins are all up-to-date, the update reminders 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 updated!
(When your site uses the latest version of all plugins, the notification icons do not display)
Now that you know how to update your plugins, let’s show you how to safely delete plugins from your WordPress blog or website.
How To Delete Plugins
Occasionally, you may choose to delete plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This helps to reduce resources on your server and help to reduce problems.
In this section, you will learn how to delete unused plugins from your WordPress 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 reinstall your site.
To delete a plugin, go to your dashboard menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins page, find 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 display an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, then click on Deactivate before continuing with your plugin deletion …
Once you have deactivated the plugin, click Delete …
If you want to review a list of all the files that will be deleted before taking the next step, then click on the “Click to view entire list of files which will be deleted” link in the “Delete Plugin” screen …
A complete list of files belonging to the plugin selected for removalwill be listed on your screen …
If you are absolutely sure about going ahead and deleting the plugin, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugins and related files will be deleted from your WordPress installation …
How To Delete Multiple 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 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) …
Next, select Deactivate from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …
Click Apply …
All selected plugins will be deactivated …
To delete all or some of the inactive plugins on your site, go to the “Plugins” screen and click on the Inactive link on the main menu …
Tick the check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to delete by checking its box …
Once you have selected all the plugins that you want deleted, select Delete from the Bulk Actions dropdown 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 absolutely sure that you would like to proceed to the next step and delete all of the selected plugins …
All plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
Plugin Management – Useful Tools
In addition to the methods shown above, you can install a number of third-party tools to manage your WordPress plugins.
PLUGIN CENTRAL
Plugin Central improves the management of your plugins with options that let you install plugins directly, displays the status of plugins in need of update in your Dashboard and lets you update multiple plugins with one click …
To learn more about this plugin, go here:
Managing WordPress Plugins On Multiple Sites
When plugin developers release a new plugin update, the best practice is to upgrde that plugin right away.
What if you have multiple sites with the same plugin installed? One option, is to login to every site and then update the plugin from that site’s admin dashboard. If you plan to manage multiple sites, updating the same plugin(s) can take quite some time to complete!
WordPress Power User Tip: If you own or manage multiple WordPress sites or blogs, you can install, upgrade and uninstall plugins on all of your sites automatically and simultaneously using a number of WordPress management tools.
Below are just some WordPress management tools that are worth knowing about:
Jetpack By WordPress.com - WordPress Plugin
The Jetpack plugin is a multifunctional plugin for WordPress that provides users with a wide range of features, allowing self-hosted WordPress site owners to access WordPress.com’s infrastructure and take advantage of robust stats, easy social sharing, and many other great features.
(The Jetpack Plugin gives you access to range of powerful WordPress features)
One of these features is “Manage”.
Jetpack Manage allows you to manage multiple WordPress sites and plugins from one simple interface.
With Manage, you can update plugins, set plugins to update automatically, and activate or deactivate plugins on a per-site basis or in bulk, whether you’re on your laptop, tablet, or mobile device.
Go here for more information about using this plugin:
ManageWP
(ManageWP is a very popular WordPress management tool for multiple WordPress sites)
ManageWP helps you easily manage all your sites from one dashboard, including updates, backups, security and more. This application features easy and intuitive one-click management and instant login to all of your WordPress sites.
To learn more about using the plugin, go here:
WP Pipeline.com
(WP Pipeline lets you update all of your WordPress sites, plugins and themes from one single location)
WP Pipeline works in a similar way to ManageWP, but has a one-time license fee instead of recurring payments. It lets you control and organize your entire online WordPress presence and perform multiple upgrades from a single WordPress installation.
To download the plugin, visit this site:
Congratulations! Now you know how to automatically upgrade and remove WordPress plugins.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group