In a separate blog post, we provide a detailed explanation of what plugins are about and how you can use these to add new features and functionality to your website with no software programming knowledge required.
You can read the article here:
In this tutorial you will learn why WordPress plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to automatically update and uninstall your WordPress plugins, and some plugin management tools.
Why WordPress Plugins Need To Be Upgraded
WordPress constantly updates its software (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in older releases, and to improve existing features or introduce new functionality to WordPress users.
Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, there will typically be new updates for WordPress plugins every.
The reason for this, is because most plugins for WordPress are created by third-party developers, so sometimes features in the newly-released WordPress version conflict with plugins that were developed and tested with a previous version. When this happens, problems 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 updating is needed). 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 to do.
Keeping your plugins up-to-date and removing old plugins you no longer use is part of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid errors or problems.
The step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins safely in WordPress without web coding knowledge or skills needed.
How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress uses a few methods to let users know when plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can tell immediately how many plugins are out-of-date from your Admin area by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
In the example below, you can see that 9 WordPress plugins need updating …
You can also tell how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Admin Toolbar (in the example below, you can again see that 9 plugins should be brought up to date) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also lets you know which plugins need to be updated …
In addition to providing information about which plugins have available updates, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin developer sites and gives you the option to update the plugins with one-click …
Let’s start by learning how to update WP plugins one at a time.
How To Upgrade Individual Plugins
We recommend performing a full backup of your website before updating your website.
From your main menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” area will display in your browser. The table of plugins can go down your page for a while, depending on how many plugins you have added to your blog …
(Plugins Section)
Tips:
If you have too many plugins installed and would like to reduce the number of plugins displayed on your screen, 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 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” function …
You will see plugin information in different color backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (active vs. inactive and outdated vs up-to-date) …
Plugins that need 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 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 to be updated, 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 update WP plugins one at a time, let’s show you how to bulk-update WP plugins.
Bulk-Upgrading WP Plugins
To bulk-update WP plugins simultaneously directly inside your dashboard, go to the “Plugins” screen 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 their individual boxes …
In the Bulk Actions drop-down menu at the top of the page, select Update …
And then click Apply …
Your selected plugins will automatically begin to update …
After all updates are completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to the Plugins screen, or select another section of your dashboard …
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 on your screen, toolbar and menus) …
All plugins are now up-to-date!
(When your plugins are all up-to-date, update alerts do not display)
Now that you know how to update your in your WP dashboard, let’s take a look at how to safely remove plugins from your WordPress site or blog.
How To Remove Plugins
Occasionally, you may want to remove WordPress plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This conserves resource usage and help to reduce causes of some problems.
In this section, you will learn how to safely remove unused plugins from your site.
We strongly recommend creating a full back up of your 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 dashboard menu and click on Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins section, locate the plugin you want to delete and make sure it is deactivated.
Hint: Inactive plugins are listed in 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 going any further …
Next, click Delete …
If you need 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” page …
A complete list of files associated with the plugin that you are about to remove will be listed on your screen …
If you are absolutely sure that you want to go ahead and delete these plugin files, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugins and related files will be removed from your server …
How To Bulk-Delete Plugins
You can delete all inactive plugins at once, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be cleared.
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 checkbox, 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 dropdown menu …
Click Apply …
The 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 …
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 selected all of the plugins that you want to delete, select Delete from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …
Click the Apply button …
A list of all selected plugins will be displayed 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 certain that you would like to proceed to the next step and remove all of the plugins listed …
Your plugins will be deleted …
Useful Management Tools For WP Plugins
As well as the methods shown above, you can use WordPress plugins 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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