In another blog post, we provide an overview of what plugins are about and how you can use these to easily enhance your web site’s capabilities.
To view this article, go here:
In this tutorial you will learn why plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to safely upgrade and delete plugins from your site, and discover practical plugin management tools if you manage multiple WordPress sites or blogs.
Why Your Plugins Need To Be Frequently Upgraded
New versions of WordPress are regularly released (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in earlier releases, as well as to improve existing features or introduce new ones.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, you can expect to see at least some new updates for plugins every.
This is because most WordPress plugins are created by third-party developers, so sometimes the code in the newly-released WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were developed for a previous version. Whenever this happens, conflicts can sometimes occur.
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 as a WordPress user, is just maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is really 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 potential errors and conflicts.
The WordPress step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins inside the WP admin dashboard without requiring web programming knowledge.
Updating And Deleting Plugins From The Dashboard – Tutorial
WordPress utilizes several ways of letting you know when plugins on your blog need to be updated.
For example, you can tell immediately how many plugins need updating as soon as you log into your Administration site by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that nine WordPress plugins need to be updated …
You can also check how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Admin Toolbar (the example below shows that a number of plugins should be brought up to date) …
The Plugins screen (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also notifies you about plugins that need to be updated …
As well as providing information about which plugins have updates available, the Plugins page provides links to the plugin download pages and gives you the option to update the plugins individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by learning how to upgrade individual WP plugins.
How To Upgrade Plugins One At A Time
We recommend performing a full backup of your website before upgrading your website.
In your admin menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
You will be taken to the “Plugins” area. This page can be quite lengthy depending on the number of plugins you have installed in your blog …
(Plugins Page)
Additional Information:
If you have too many plugins and would like to reduce the number of plugins showing on the 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 page), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
Your Plugins section 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” function …
WordPress displays information about plugins in different backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (inactive vs. active and up-to-date vs. outdated) …
Plugins that require updating have a distinctive 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 process, so that updating your plugins happens “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins screen …
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 all plugins in one simple operation.
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Now that you know how to upgrade individual plugins, let’s show you how to upgrade several WP plugins simultaneously.
Bulk-Updating WordPress Plugins
To upgrade multiple plugins at the same time directly inside your dashboard, go to the “Plugins” page 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 each plugin you want to update by checking their individual boxes …
In the Bulk Actions drop down menu above the plugin list, choose Update …
And then click Apply …
Your selected plugins will automatically begin updating …
After all plugin upgrades are finished, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to the Plugins screen, or choose a different section of your dashboard …
Once all plugins are up-to-date, the plugin notifications disappear (i.e. the “at-a-glance” indicators and “There is a new version of XYZ plugin available” messages no longer display) …
All plugins are now up-to-date!
(When your site uses the latest version of all plugins, the notification icons disappear)
Now that you know how to upgrade your plugins, let’s take a look at how to remove plugins safely from your site or blog.
Deleting Plugins
At times, you may want to delete WP plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This can help reduce resources on your server and helps to eliminate potential problems.
In this section, you will learn how to safely uninstall unused plugins from your WordPress blog or 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 restore your site.
To remove a plugin, go to your admin menu and click on Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins area, locate the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is inactive.
Hint: Inactive plugins use 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 continuing with your plugin deletion …
Click on Delete …
If you would like to browse 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” page …
A complete list of files belonging to the plugin that you are about to delete will be listed on your screen …
If you are positively sure that you want to proceed and delete the selected plugin files, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugin(s) will be deleted from your server …
Bulk-Deleting 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 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, specify Deactivate from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …
Click Apply …
The selected plugins will be deactivated …
To delete all or some of the inactive plugins, go to the “Plugins” section 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 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, choose Delete from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …
Click Apply …
A list of all selected plugins will display 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 want to proceed to the next step and delete all of the plugins listed …
Your plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
WP Plugin Management – Useful WordPress Tools
As well as the methods shown above, you can install other WordPress plugins 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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