In another post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use plugins to add new features to your site with no technical knowledge required.
You can read the article here:
In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping your plugins up-to-date, how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins from your site, and useful plugin management tips if you plan to manage multiple WordPress sites or blogs.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Many WordPress Plugins Need Upgrading
WordPress frequently updates its software (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in earlier releases, as well as to improve existing features.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, there will typically be new new update notifications for plugins each time a new WordPress version is released.
The reason for this, is because most plugins for WordPress are created by third-party developers, so sometimes features in the newly-released WordPress version conflict with plugins that were created and tested to work with a previous version. When this happens, issues can sometimes occur.
Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are very proactive when it comes to ensuring that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if updating is needed). All you need to do as a website owner, is just maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is very quick, simple and easy to do.
Keeping your plugins up-to-date and deleting old plugins you no longer need is an essential aspect of good WordPress management and helps to avoid errors and conflicts.
The WordPress step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins in your WP dashboard without editing web code.
Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Inside Your WP Dashboard – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress has a few methods of letting users know when plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can see how many plugins need updating as soon as you log into your Administration site by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that 9 plugins have older versions that need to be updated …
You can also check how many plugins need to be updated from your WordPress Toolbar (as shown below, several plugins should be brought up to date) …
The Plugins screen (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also provides information about plugins that need updating …
In addition to providing information about which plugins have updates available, the Plugins screen provides links to the plugin developer sites and gives you the option to update the plugins individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by learning how to upgrade one plugin at a time.
Update WordPress Plugins One At A Time
We recommend making a full backup of your data and files before making any upgrades to your website or blog.
From your dashboard menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” section will display in your browser. This list of plugins can be quite long depending on the number of plugins you have added to your site …
(Plugins Page)
Tips:
If you have too many plugins and would like to reduce the number of plugins displaying on your 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 up on the page by default), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
Your Plugins section will now be made more manageable with a pagination feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search” box …
You will see plugin information in different backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (active vs. inactive and up-to-date vs. outdated) …
Plugins in need of upgrading have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin Name] available” …
Select the plugin that needs to be updated and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides streamlined plugin updates, so that the process of updating your plugins takes place “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins screen …
Repeat the above process for all plugins on your site that need to be updated, or see the section below if you have several plugins that are out-of-date and would like to update them all at the same time.
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Now that you know how to upgrade plugins one at a time, the next step is to learn how to update several WP plugins simultaneously.
How To Bulk-Upgrade Plugins
To bulk-upgrade plugins using the automatic update feature, 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 only the plugins you want to update by checking their individual boxes …
In the Bulk Actions pull-down menu above the table of plugins, select Update …
Click Apply …
Your selected plugins will begin to update automatically …
After all plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to your Plugins screen, or select another option from the main menu …
Once your plugins are all 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) …
All plugins are now up-to-date!
(When plugins on your site are up-to-date, notification icons no longer display)
Now that you know how to automatically update your in the WP dashboard, let’s take a look at how to uninstall plugins safely from your WordPress site.
How To Remove Plugins
It’s a good idea to remove plugins that you no longer plan to use. This conserves resource usage and also eliminates potential problems.
In this section, we show you how to remove unused plugins from your site or blog.
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 restore your site.
To delete a plugin, go to your WP admin menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins screen, locate the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is inactive.
Hint: Inactive plugins have a different colored background 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 …
Next, click Delete …
If you need 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” section …
The entire list of files associated with the plugin selected for deletionwill display on your screen …
If you are positively certain about going ahead and deleting these plugin, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugin(s) will be removed from your WordPress installation …
Deleting Several WP Plugins At Once
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 presently 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, specify Deactivate from the Bulk Actions drop down 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 check box, or click on the check box 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 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 want to proceed to the next step and delete all of the selected plugins …
The plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
WordPress Plugin Management – Tools
As well as the methods shown above, you can install a range of tools 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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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum