In a separate article, we provide an overview of what plugins are about and how you can use these to easily add new features to your website with no technical skills required.
You can read this article here:
In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn why WordPress plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to upgrade and uninstall plugins from your site, and practical tips to help you better manage your plugins.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Some Plugins Need To Be Frequently Upgraded
New versions of WordPress are frequently being released (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in older versions, as well as to improve existing features.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, you can expect to see at least some new new update notifications for plugins every.
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 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 making sure that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if updating is required). All you have to do on your end, is keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is really easy to do.
Keeping your plugins up-to-date and removing old plugins you no longer need is an essential aspect of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid potential problems or errors.
The WordPress tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins in WordPress without coding knowledge or skills required.
How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins – Tutorial
WordPress provides a few ways to notify users when plugins need updating.
For example, you can immediately see how many plugins need updating as soon as you log into your Admin area simply by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that 9 WP plugins have older versions that need to be updated …
You can also see how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Admin Toolbar (the screenshot below shows that several plugins should be brought up to date) …
The Plugins page (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also lets you know which plugins need to be updated …
In addition to providing information about which plugins have updates available, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin developer sites and gives you the option to update the plugin with one-click …
Let’s start by learning how to upgrade individual WP plugins.
How To Upgrade Plugins Individually
Always make a full backup of your site files and database before upgrading your website.
In your WP admin menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
You will be taken to the “Plugins” section. This page can be quite long depending on how many plugins you have installed in your site …
(The WordPress Plugins Screen)
Useful Information:
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 page and type in a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show up on the page by default, i.e. “999”), then click Apply …
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 “Plugin Search” box …
You will see plugin information in different backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (active vs. inactive and out-of-date vs up-to-date) …
Plugins in need of upgrading have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Insert Plugin Name] available” …
Find the plugin that needs to be updated 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 takes place with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat this process for all 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 them all at the same time.
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Now that you know how to upgrade WP plugins individually, the next step is to learn how to bulk-upgrade WordPress plugins.
Bulk-Upgrading WP Plugins
To bulk-update WordPress plugins 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 …
Tick the checkbox next to 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 drop down menu above the plugin table, select Update …
Click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will begin to update automatically …
Once the update process has completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to your Plugins screen, or choose another option from the admin menu …
Once all plugins are up-to-date, the update reminders 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 have now been updated!
(When plugins on your site are up-to-date, the notification icons do not display)
Now that you know how to automatically upgrade in the admin dashboard, let’s show you how to safely remove plugins safely from your blog or website.
How To Safely Remove WordPress Plugins
As part of good WordPress site management practices, it’s a good idea to remove inactive plugins. This helps to decrease resource usage and will help you avoid problems.
In this section, we show you how to delete unused plugins from your blog or site.
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 click on Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins page, find the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is inactive.
Hint: Inactive plugins appear in a different colored background than active plugins and display an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, then click on Deactivate before going any further …
Once you have deactivated the plugin, click Delete …
If you want to browse 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 …
The entire list of files belonging to the plugin selected for deletionwill display on your screen …
If you are absolutely certain about going ahead and deleting the plugin, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugin(s) will be deleted from your server …
Bulk-Deleting WordPress Plugins
You can delete all inactive plugins at once, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be deleted.
Note: To delete any plugins that are currently 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 checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …
Once you have done this, select Deactivate from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …
Click Apply …
The selected plugins will be deactivated …
To delete all or some of the inactive plugins on your site, go to the “Plugins” screen and click on the Inactive link in the Plugins menu …
Tick the checkbox in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to remove by checking their individual boxes …
Once you have ticked all the check boxes next to the plugins that you want to delete, choose Delete from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …
Click Apply …
A list of all selected plugins will display 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 remove all of the selected plugins …
The plugins will be deleted …
Plugin Management – Useful Tools
In addition to the methods shown above, you can use a number 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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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now