In another post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use these to add new features or functionality to your website or blog without touching code.
To view this article, go here:
In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping all plugins up-to-date, how to automatically update and uninstall plugins, and discover useful tools to help you better manage your plugins.
Why Many Of Your Plugins Need To Be Upgraded
WordPress frequently updates its software (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in previous software releases, and to improve existing features.
Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, there will typically be new new update notifications for plugins every.
The reason for this, is because most WordPress plugins are created by external developers, so sometimes code in the newly-released WordPress version conflict with plugins that were built for a previous version. Whenever this happens, problems 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 required). All you need to do on your end, is simply maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is very simple, quick and easy to do.
Keeping your 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 and conflicts.
The WordPress tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins with no web coding knowledge necessary.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins Safely – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress employs several methods to notify users when plugins need updating.
For example, you can immediately see how many plugins are out-of-date as soon as you log into your WordPress Dashboard just by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, nine WordPress plugins have older versions that need to be updated …
You can also see how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Toolbar (as shown below, several plugins should be updated) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also notifies you about plugins that need updating …
As well as providing information about plugins that have available updates, the Plugins screen provides links to the plugin download pages and gives you the option to update your plugins with one-click …
Let’s start by learning how to upgrade individual WP plugins.
How To Update Plugins One At A Time
We strongly recommend performing a backup of your data and files before updating your blog or website.
From your main menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” page will display in your browser. The table of plugins can run down your screen for a while, depending on the number of 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 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 (by default, all plugins display on the page), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
Your Plugins area 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” field …
WordPress displays information about plugins in different color backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (inactive vs. active and out-of-date vs up-to-date) …
Plugins that require upgrading have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] available” …
Find the plugin that you want to update and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides smooth & fast plugin updates, so that updating your plugins takes place “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins screen …
Repeat the above 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 at once.
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Now that you know how to update individual WP plugins, the next step is to learn how to bulk-upgrade plugins.
How To Bulk-Upgrade WP Plugins
To upgrade multiple plugins in a single operation directly inside your dashboard, go to the “Plugins” area 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 each plugin you want to update by checking its box …
In the Bulk Actions drop-down menu above the table of plugins, choose Update …
Click Apply …
Your selected plugins will begin updating …
After your plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to the Plugins area, or select another option from the main menu …
Once all plugins are up-to-date, the plugin notifications 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 your site uses the latest version of all plugins, the notification icons do not display)
Now that you know how to upgrade WP inside your WP dashboard, it’s time to learn how to safely delete plugins from your site or blog.
Deleting Plugins
At times, you may choose to remove plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This can help to decrease server resources and help to eliminate causes of problems.
In this section, we show you how to safely deactivate and delete unused plugins from your WordPress site or blog.
Always create 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 remove a plugin, go to your admin menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins screen, find 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, click on Deactivate before continuing with your plugin deletion …
Click Delete …
If you need 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” page …
A complete list of files associated with the plugin selected for deletionwill display on your screen …
If you are absolutely sure about going ahead and deleting these plugin, click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugin(s) will be removed from your WordPress installation …
Deleting Several WordPress 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, you 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) …
Once you have done this, select Deactivate from the Bulk Actions drop-down menu …
Click Apply …
All selected plugins will be deactivated …
To delete all or some of the inactive plugins, go to the “Plugins” section and click on the Inactive link in the Plugins menu …
Click on the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to delete by checking its box …
Once you have selected all the plugins that you want to delete, select 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 sure that you would like to go ahead and remove all of the selected plugins …
Your 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 a range of tools that help 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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