How To Update WordPress Plugins

Learn how to easily update all of your plugins inside your WordPress dashboard…

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely In WordPressIn a separate article, we provide a detailed explanation of what WordPress plugins are about and how you can use these to easily extend your website’s functionality.

You can read the article here:

In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn why WordPress plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to automatically upgrade and remove your WordPress plugins, and some great tips to help you better manage your plugins.

Why Many Of Your WordPress Plugins Need To Be Frequently Upgraded

New WordPress versions are regularly released (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in previous software releases, and to improve existing features.

Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, you can expect to see at least some new new update notices for WordPress plugins every.

The reason for this, is because most WordPress plugins are created by external developers, so sometimes code in the new WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were built for a previous version. Whenever this happens, there is a potential for problems to sometimes occur.

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 required). All you need to do on your end, is simply maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is really simple and easy to do.

Info

Keeping your WordPress plugins up-to-date and removing old plugins you no longer use is part of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid problems and errors.

The WordPress step-by-step tutorial below explains how to upgrade and delete plugins safely in WordPress without requiring coding knowledge.

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Inside Your Dashboard – Tutorial

WordPress has a number of different ways to let users know when plugins need to be updated.

For example, you can instantly see how many plugins need updating inside your Site’s Dashboard simply by looking at the “Plugins” menu.

In the screenshot below, you can see that 9 plugins have older versions that need to be updated …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

You can also view how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Admin Toolbar (the screenshot below shows how many plugins should be updated) …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also provides information about plugins that need to be updated …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

In addition to providing information about plugins that have updates available, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin developer sites and gives you the option to update your plugins instantly …

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins

Let’s start by learning how to update individual plugins.

Upgrading WordPress Plugins One At A Time

Warning

We recommend making a full backup of your data and files before making any changes to your website or blog.

From your WP admin menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins

Upgrading And Deleting WordPress Plugins

The “Plugins” area will display in your browser. The list of plugins can run down your screen for some length, depending on how many plugins you have added to your blog …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins From The Dashboard

(WordPress Plugins Page)

Tip

Useful Info:

If you have too many plugins and would like to reduce the number of plugins displayed on your page, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins area and enter a smaller number of items per page (by default, all plugins display on the page), then click the ‘Apply’ button …

Updating And Deleting Plugins

Your Plugins page will now be reduced in size with a ’numbered pages’ feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search Installed Plugins” box …

How To Automatically Update And Delete WordPress Plugins Safely

You will see plugin information in different color backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (active vs. inactive and out-of-date vs up-to-date) …

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins In WordPress

Plugins that require updating have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin Name] available”

Updating And Deleting Plugins

Select the plugin that you want to update and click on the update now link …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Inside The WP Dashboard

WordPress provides streamlined plugin updates, so that updating your plugins takes place with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins area …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins In The Dashboard

Repeat this process for any other 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 upgrade all plugins at once.

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Now that you know how to upgrade one WP plugin at a time, it’s time to learn how to upgrade several plugins simultaneously.

How To Bulk-Update Plugins

To upgrade multiple WP plugins in a single operation using the automatic update feature, go to the “Plugins” section and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

Click on the checkbox in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to update by checking its box …

Updating And Deleting WordPress Plugins In Your Dashboard

In the Bulk Actions dropdown menu at the top of the page, choose Update

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely In Your Dashboard

And then click Apply

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely Inside The WP Admin Dashboard

The plugins you have selected will begin updating …

Updating And Deleting WordPress Plugins

After your plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to your Plugins area, or go to another section of your dashboard …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

Once all plugins are up-to-date, any plugin alerts will disappear (i.e. the “at-a-glance” indicators and “There is a new version of XYZ plugin available” notices no longer display) …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely In Your Dashboard

You have updated all plugins on your site to their latest version!

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely

(When your site uses the latest version of all plugins, update icons no longer display)

Now that you know how to automatically upgrade your plugins, it’s time to learn how to remove plugins from your WordPress site or blog.

How To Safely Delete Plugins

It’s a good idea to remove plugins that you no longer need. This helps to decrease server resources and help to eliminate causes of some problems.

In this section, you will learn how to delete unused plugins from your WordPress site or blog.

Warning

Always create 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 admin menu and choose Plugins > Installed Plugins

How To Upgrade And Delete WordPress Plugins Safely

In the Plugins area, locate the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is inactive.

Hint: Inactive plugins appear in a different background color than active plugins and display an “Activate” link below the plugin name …

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely Inside The WordPress Dashboard

If the plugin is active, click on Deactivate before proceeding with your plugin deletion …

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely Inside The WordPress Admin Dashboard

Once you have deactivated the plugin, click Delete

How To Upgrade And Delete WordPress Plugins In The WP Admin Dashboard

If you would like to review a list of 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” screen …

Updating And Deleting Plugins

A complete list of files associated with the plugin that you are about to remove will be listed on your screen …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

If you are absolutely sure that you would like to proceed and delete the plugin files, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely

The selected plugin(s) will be deleted …

Updating And Deleting Plugins In WordPress

How To Delete Multiple Plugins Simultaneously

You can delete all inactive plugins at once, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be deleted.

Important Info

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 checkbox, or selecting the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins In Your Dashboard

Next, choose Deactivate from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely Inside The Dashboard

Click the Apply button …

Updating And Deleting WordPress Plugins In The Dashboard

All selected plugins will be deactivated …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely From The WordPress Dashboard

To delete all or some of the inactive plugins, go to the “Plugins” section and click on the Inactive link in the Plugins menu …

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely

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 …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely In WordPress

Once you have ticked all the check boxes next to the plugins that you want to delete, specify Delete from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins

Click Apply

Updating And Deleting Plugins

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 sure that you want to proceed to the next step and delete all of the plugins listed …

Updating And Deleting WordPress Plugins Safely

The plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …

Updating And Deleting WordPress Plugins In The WP Admin Dashboard

WordPress Tools For Managing Plugins

As well as the methods shown above, you can use a number of 3rd-party tools to manage your WordPress plugins.

Health Check & troubleshooting

Health Check & Troubleshooting WordPress plugin
Health Check identifies common problems and helps you troubleshoot plugin and theme conflicts.

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

WPMU DEV's The Hub - Unlimited WordPress Site Management
WPMU DEV’s The Hub – Unlimited WordPress Site Management

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.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Updates menu

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.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Updates menu

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.

The Hub - Update notifications.
This feature can help you save a lot of time updating multiple WordPress sites, especially when WordPress releases a new version of its software.

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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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)