In another blog post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use plugins to enhance your site’s capabilities.
You can view the article here:
In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping all WordPress plugins up-to-date, how to upgrade and uninstall plugins from your site, and practical plugin management tools.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Your Plugins Need To Be Frequently Updated
The WordPress software is regularly updated (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 users.
Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, there will typically be new new update notices for plugins each time a new version of WordPress is announced.
This is because most plugins for WordPress are created by external developers, so sometimes code or features in the new WordPress version conflict with plugins that were built for a previous version. Whenever this happens, there is a potential for conflicts 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 required). All you need to do as a website owner, is simply keep 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 use is an essential aspect of good WordPress management and helps to avoid any potential problems or errors.
The step-by-step tutorial below explains how to upgrade and delete WordPress plugins safely without editing web code.
Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely Inside Your WP Admin Dashboard – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress employs several ways to let you know when your plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can see ‘at a glance’ how many plugins are out-of-date from your WordPress Dashboard simply by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that nine WordPress plugins have older versions that need updating …
You can also tell how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Notification Toolbar (as shown below, 9 plugins need updating) …
The Plugins screen (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also lets you know which plugins need updating …
In addition to providing information about which plugins have updates available, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin download sites and gives you the option to update your plugin individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by showing you how to upgrade individual plugins.
Upgrade Individual WordPress Plugins
We recommend performing a backup of your website before upgrading your website or blog.
From your admin menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
You will be taken to the “Plugins” page. The list of plugins can go down your page for a while, depending on how many plugins you have added to your site …
(WordPress Plugins Section)
Tips:
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 page and enter a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show on the screen by default, i.e. “999”), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
Your Plugins section will now be reduced in size with a page scrolling feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search Installed Plugins” box …
WordPress displays plugin information in different color backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (active vs. inactive and outdated vs up-to-date) …
Plugins in need of upgrading show the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] available” …
Select 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 plugin update process, so that the process of updating your plugins takes place “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat the above process for any other plugins on your site that need updating, or see the section below if you have several plugins that are out-of-date and would like to update all plugins at the same time.
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Now that you know how to update individual plugins, let’s show you how to bulk-update plugins.
How To Update Various Plugins
To update multiple 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 check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to update by checking their individual boxes …
In the Bulk Actions dropdown menu at the top of the page, choose Update …
Click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will automatically begin updating …
Once all plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to the Plugins screen, or go to another section of your dashboard …
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 on your screen, toolbar and menus) …
All plugins are now up-to-date!
(When your plugins are all up-to-date, update notices do not display)
Now that you know how to automatically update in the dashboard, let’s take a look at how to safely uninstall plugins safely from your WordPress site or blog.
Deleting Plugins
At times, you may choose to delete plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This helps to reduce resource usage and also eliminates problems.
In this section, we show you how to safely delete unused plugins from your WordPress blog or site.
We strongly recommend creating 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 WP admin menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins area, find the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is deactivated.
Hint: Inactive plugins have a different background color than active plugins and show an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, click on Deactivate before proceeding with your plugin deletion …
Click Delete …
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” section …
A complete list of files associated with the plugin that you are about to delete will be listed on your screen …
If you are absolutely sure about going ahead and deleting these plugin, click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugins and related files will be deleted …
Bulk-Deleting 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 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 dropdown menu …
Click Apply …
Your selected plugins will be deactivated …
Once you have deactivated your 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 checkbox, or click on the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select and delete all inactive plugins …
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 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 would like to go ahead and remove all of the plugins listed …
All selected plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
Managing WP Plugins – Tools
As well as the methods shown above, you can use 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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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)