Tag: Wordpress Plugins

In another article, we explain what plugins are and how you can use plugins to easily extend your web site’s functionality.

You can read this article here:

• WP Plugins – Improving Your Website’s Functionality

In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping all WordPress plugins up-to-date, how to easily update and uninstall your WordPress plugins, and some great tools to help you better manage your plugins.

Why Many WordPress Plugins Need Updating

The WordPress software is constantly updated (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in older versions, and to improve existing features.

Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, there will typically be new updates for plugins each time a new version of WordPress is released.

This is because most WordPress plugins are created by third-party developers, so sometimes code in the new WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were developed and tested with a previous version. Whenever this happens, issues can 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 have to do on your end, is just maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is really simple to do.

Keeping your WordPress plugins regularly updated and removing old plugins you no longer use is part of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid any potential errors or conflicts.

The step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins safely without editing web code.

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely – Step-By-Step Tutorial

WordPress has a few methods to alert you when plugins need updating.

For example, you can instantly see how many plugins are out-of-date from your Administration panel by looking at the “Plugins” menu.

For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that nine WordPress plugins are out of date and need updating …

You can also see how many plugins need to be updated from your WordPress Toolbar (as shown below, a number of plugins should be updated) …

The Plugins section (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 pages and gives you the option to update your plugins instantly …

Let’s start by learning how to upgrade individual WordPress plugins.

Upgrading WordPress Plugins Individually

We recommend performing a backup of your website before upgrading your blog or website.

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

You will be taken to the “Plugins” screen. The table of plugins can go down your page for a while, depending on how many plugins you have installed in your blog …

(The WordPress Plugins Section)

Tips:

If you have too many plugins and would like to make this section more manageable, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins screen and type in a smaller number of items per page (by default, all plugins display on the screen), then click the ‘Apply’ button …

Your Plugins section will now be made more manageable with a page scrolling 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 your plugins (inactive vs. active and outdated vs up-to-date) …

Plugins that require updating display the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Insert Plugin Name] available” …

Select the plugin that needs updating and click on the update now link …

WordPress has done away with the loading screen when updating plugins and streamlined the plugin updating process, so that updating your plugins takes place with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins area …

Repeat the above process for any other plugins on your site that need updating, or refer to the section below if you have a number of plugins that are out-of-date and would like to update all plugins at the same time.

***

Now that you know how to upgrade one WP plugin at a time, let’s show you how to update many plugins simultaneously.

Bulk-Upgrading WordPress Plugins

To update multiple plugins simultaneously from your admin area, go to the “Plugins” screen and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …

Click on the check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to update by checking their individual boxes …

In the Bulk Actions drop-down menu at the top of the page, choose Update …

Click Apply …

Your selected plugins will update all at once …

After your plugins have all been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to the Plugins section, or choose another option from the sidebar menu …

Once your plugins are all up-to-date, the plugin notifications 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) …

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

(When your site uses the latest version of all plugins, the notification icons do not display)

Now that you know how to automatically update WordPress inside your admin dashboard, let’s take a look at how to safely delete plugins safely from your WordPress blog or website.

How To Safely Delete Plugins

It’s a good idea to uninstall plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This can help reduce resource usage and also eliminates causes of some problems.

In this section, you will learn how to uninstall unused plugins from your site.

We strongly recommend creating 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 WP admin menu and choose Plugins > Installed Plugins …

In the Plugins screen, locate the plugin you want to delete 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 continuing …

Next, click Delete …

If you need to review a list of all the files that will be deleted before going ahead, then click on the “Click to view entire list of files which will be deleted” link in the “Delete Plugin” section …

All files associated with the plugin selected for removalwill be listed on your screen …

If you are absolutely sure that you want to go ahead and delete these plugin files, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …

Your plugins and related files will be deleted …

Bulk-Deleting WP Plugins

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

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 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 dropdown menu …

Click the Apply button …

The 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 check boxes next to the plugins that you want deleted, specify Delete from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …

Click the Apply button …

A list of all selected plugins will be displayed 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 proceed to the next step and delete all of the plugins listed …

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

WordPress Tools For Managing Plugins

As well as the methods shown above, you can use a number of tools to 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.

***