In another blog post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use these to easily add new features to your blog with no technical skills required.
To read the article, go here:
In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping all plugins up-to-date, how to safely update and remove your WordPress plugins, and discover some great tools to help you better manage your plugins.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Some Of Your Plugins Need To Be Frequently Upgraded
WordPress regularly updates its software (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in older versions, and to improve existing features or introduce new ones.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, there will typically be new new update notices for WordPress plugins whenever new versions of WordPress are announced.
This is because most WordPress plugins are created by third-party developers, so sometimes code in the newly-released WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were created and tested to work with a previous version. When this happens, there is a potential for conflicts to sometimes develop.
Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are very 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 on your end, is just keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is very simple and easy to do.
Keeping your plugins regularly updated and removing old plugins you no longer need is part of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid any errors or problems.
The WordPress step-by-step tutorial below explains how to upgrade and delete plugins safely without web programming skills required.
How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins In WordPress – Tutorial
WordPress has a few methods to notify users when plugins need updating.
For example, you can see ‘at a glance’ how many plugins need to be updated as soon as you log into your Administration site simply by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
In the screenshot below, nine plugins are out of date and need to be updated …
You can also see how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Admin Toolbar (in the screenshot below, you can see how many plugins should be brought up to date) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you how many plugins need to be updated …
In addition to providing information about which plugins have available updates, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin download sites and gives you the option to update the plugin with one-click …
Let’s start by showing you how to upgrade WP plugins individually.
How To Upgrade Single Plugins
We recommend performing a backup of your site files and database before upgrading your website.
From your dashboard menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
You will be taken to the “Plugins” section. This page can be quite lengthy depending on how many plugins you have added to your blog …
(WordPress Plugins Section)
Useful Information:
If you have too many plugins installed and would like to make this section more manageable, 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 on the page by default), then click Apply …
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 Plugins” box …
WordPress displays information about plugins in different color backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (inactive vs. active and up-to-date vs. out-of-date) …
Plugins in need of updating have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin Name] available” …
Select the plugin that needs updating and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides simpler plugin updating, so that the process of updating your plugins takes place with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat this process for any other plugins on your site that need updating, 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 one WordPress plugin at a time, the next step is to learn how to update a bunch of plugins simultaneously.
How To Update Various WordPress Plugins
To bulk-update WP plugins simultaneously from your admin area, go to the “Plugins” page and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Tick the check box in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to upgrade by checking their individual boxes …
In the Bulk Actions pull-down menu above the table of plugins, choose Update …
And then click Apply …
Your selected plugins will begin the update process …
After the update process has been completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to your Plugins area, or select another option from the admin menu …
Once all plugins are up-to-date, any plugin alerts 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) …
You have updated all plugins on your site!
(When your plugins are all up-to-date, notification icons no longer appear)
Now that you know how to automatically update your plugins, it’s time to learn how to delete plugins from your WordPress site.
Deleting WordPress Plugins
At times, you may decide to remove plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This conserves server resources and help to eliminate potential problems.
In this section, you will learn how to uninstall unused plugins from your WordPress 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 section, locate the plugin you want to delete and make sure it is inactive.
Hint: Inactive plugins use a different background color than active plugins and show an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, then click on Deactivate before proceeding …
Next, click Delete …
If you would like to browse all the files that will be deleted before going ahead with the next step, then click on the “Click to view entire list of files which will be deleted” link in the “Delete Plugin” screen …
All files belonging to the plugin selected for deletionwill display on your screen …
If you are positively certain about going ahead and deleting the plugin files, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugin(s) will be deleted from your WordPress installation …
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 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 check box, or selecting the check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …
Next, select Deactivate from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …
Click the Apply button …
All selected plugins will be deactivated …
Once you have deactivated these 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 ticked all the checkboxes next to the plugins that you want deleted, choose Delete from the Bulk Actions pull-down 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 would like to go ahead and delete all of the selected plugins …
All plugins will be deleted …
WordPress Management Tools For WordPress Plugins
As well as the methods shown above, you can use a range of third-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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