In a separate post, we provide a detailed explanation of what WP plugins are about and how you can use these to add new features and functionality to your website or blog with no software programming skills required.
To read the article, go here:
In this tutorial you will learn why WordPress plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to upgrade and delete your WordPress plugins, and discover useful tools to help you better manage your plugins.
Why Many Of Your WordPress Plugins Need Frequent Updating
New versions of WordPress are regularly released (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in previous releases, and to improve existing features or introduce new functionality to WordPress users.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, there will typically be new updates for WordPress plugins every.
The reason for this, is because most WordPress plugins are created by 3rd-party developers, so sometimes the code in the new WordPress version conflict with plugins that were developed for a previous version. Whenever this happens, problems can sometimes develop.
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 needed). All you have to do as a website owner, is just maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is very easy and simple to do.
Keeping your plugins up-to-date and deleting old plugins you no longer use is part of good WordPress management and helps to avoid errors and problems.
The WordPress step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins in the dashboard without requiring web coding skills.
How To Automatically Update And Delete WordPress Plugins – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress provides a number of different methods to notify users when plugins need updating.
For example, you can tell immediately how many plugins are out-of-date as soon as you log into your Administration area simply by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
In the screenshot below, 9 WP plugins need to be updated …
You can also check how many plugins need updating from your WP Toolbar (the example below shows how many plugins should 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 pages and gives you the option to update the plugin with one-click …
Let’s start by learning how to upgrade individual plugins.
Updating WordPress Plugins Individually
We recommend making a full backup of your data and files before updating your website.
In your main menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” area will display in your browser. The table of plugins can be quite lengthy depending on how many plugins you have added to your blog …
(Plugins Page)
Tips:
If you have too many plugins installed and would like to reduce the number of plugins showing on your page, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins area and type in a smaller number of items per page (by default, all plugins display on the screen), then click Apply …
Your Plugins page 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 Installed Plugins” field …
You will see information about plugins in different backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (active vs. inactive and up-to-date vs. outdated) …
Plugins that need upgrading display the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Insert Plugin Name] available” …
Locate the plugin that needs updating and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides faster plugin updates, so that updating your plugins happens “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins screen …
Repeat the above process for all plugins on your site that need updating, or refer to the section below if you have many 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 update individual plugins, the next step is to learn how to update many plugins simultaneously.
How To Update Many WP Plugins Simultaneously
To bulk-update WordPress plugins simultaneously from your admin area, go to the “Plugins” section and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Click on the check box in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to upgrade by checking its box …
In the Bulk Actions pull-down menu at the top of the page, select Update …
Click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will update all at once …
Once all plugin upgrades are completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to your Plugins section, or visit another section of your dashboard …
Once all plugins are 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) …
You have updated all plugins on your site!
(When plugins on your site are up-to-date, notification icons do not display)
Now that you know how to update plugins, let’s take a look at how to delete plugins safely from your WordPress blog or website.
Deleting WordPress Plugins
As part of smart site management, it’s a good idea to remove plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This decreases resources on your server and also eliminate causes of some problems.
In this section, you will learn how to safely remove 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 reinstall your site.
To delete a plugin, go to your admin menu and click on Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins page, find the plugin you want to delete and make sure it is deactivated.
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, then click on Deactivate before proceeding with your plugin deletion …
Click Delete …
If you would like to have a look at all the files that will be deleted before proceeding any further, 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 associated with the plugin selected for deletionwill display on your screen …
If you are sure about going ahead and deleting the selected plugin files, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugins and related files will be deleted from your WordPress installation …
How To Safely Delete Several Plugins Simultaneously
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, 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 drop down menu …
Click Apply …
All 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 …
Click the checkbox in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to delete by checking its box …
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 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 proceed to the next step and delete all of the selected plugins …
Your plugins will be deleted …
WordPress Plugin Management – WordPress Tools
As well as the methods shown above, you can use a range of 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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