In another blog post, we provide a detailed explanation of what WordPress plugins are all about and how you can use plugins to easily increase your blog’s capabilities.
You can view the article here:
In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping your plugins up-to-date, how to safely update and delete your WordPress plugins, and discover some tips to help you better manage your plugins.
Why Many Of Your WordPress Plugins Need Frequent Upgrading
The WordPress software is constantly updated (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 have installed on your site, there will typically be new new update notices for WordPress plugins whenever new WordPress versions are announced.
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 and tested with a previous version. When this happens, there is a potential for problems 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 updating is needed). All you have to do on your end, is maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is really simple, quick and easy 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 potential errors and conflicts.
The step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins safely in WordPress without requiring web coding skills.
Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Inside Your Dashboard – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress uses a number of different methods to let users know when plugins need updating.
For example, you can see ‘at a glance’ how many plugins are out-of-date from your WordPress Dashboard by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that nine plugins are out of date and need updating …
You can also view how many plugins need updating from your WP Administration Toolbar (the screenshot below shows that several plugins should be updated) …
The Plugins page (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you how many plugins need to be updated …
As well as 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 your plugins individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by learning how to upgrade individual WP plugins.
How To Upgrade Single A Plugin
We strongly recommend performing a full backup of your website before making any upgrades to your website or blog.
From your dashboard menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” area will display in your browser. The table of plugins can be quite long depending on the number of plugins you have added to your site …
(Plugins Page)
Useful 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 area and type in a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show on the screen by default), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
Your Plugins page will now be reduced in size with a pagination feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search Plugins” box …
WordPress displays information about plugins in different backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (inactive vs. active and out-of-date vs up-to-date) …
Plugins that need updating show the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] available” …
Locate the plugin that needs to be updated and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides smooth and fast plugin updates, so that the process of updating your plugins happens with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat this process for all plugins on your site that need updating, or refer to the section below if you have several plugins that are out-of-date and would like to update all plugins at once.
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Now that you know how to update individual WP plugins, it’s time to learn how to bulk-upgrade WP plugins.
How To Upgrade Many WP Plugins Simultaneously
To bulk-upgrade plugins using the automatic upgrade feature, go to the “Plugins” section and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Tick the checkbox 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 dropdown menu above the plugin table, select Update …
And then click Apply …
Your selected plugins will begin updating …
Once all plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to the Plugins area, or select another option from the WP admin menu …
Once your plugins are all 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” notices no longer display on your screen, toolbar and menus) …
All plugins are now up-to-date!
(When your site uses the latest version of all plugins, the notification icons no longer display)
Now that you know how to update your inside the dashboard, it’s time to learn how to safely delete plugins safely from your blog or website.
How To Safely Delete Plugins
Occasionally, you may choose to delete plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This can help to reduce resources on your server and help to eliminate potential problems.
In this section, you will learn how to safely uninstall unused plugins from your WordPress 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 restore your site.
To delete a plugin, go to your admin menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins section, locate the plugin you want to delete and make sure it is inactive.
Hint: Inactive plugins have a different background color than active plugins and display an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, click on Deactivate before proceeding with your plugin deletion …
Click Delete …
If you need to have a look at 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 …
All files belonging to the plugin that you are about to delete will be listed on your screen …
If you are absolutely certain that you would like to proceed and delete these plugin, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugins and related files will be deleted …
How To Safely Bulk-Delete WordPress Plugins
You can delete all inactive plugins at once, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be uninstalled.
Note: To delete any plugins that are presently 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 checkbox, or selecting the check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …
Next, 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” screen and click on the Inactive link in the Plugins menu …
Select all of the plugins you want to delete by either placing a tick next to their checkbox, or click on the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select and delete all inactive plugins …
Once you have selected all the plugins that you want to delete, choose Delete from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …
Click the Apply button …
A list of all selected plugins will be displayed 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 sure that you want to proceed to the next step and delete all of the plugins listed …
All plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
Plugin Management – WordPress Tools
In addition to the methods shown above, you can use a range of 3rd-party tools 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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