In a separate blog post, we provide a detailed explanation of what plugins are all about and how you can use these to easily expand your site’s capabilities.
To read the article, go here:
In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping your WordPress plugins up-to-date, how to easily upgrade and uninstall plugins, and some great plugin management tips.
Why Some Plugins Need Updating
WordPress frequently updates its software (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in older software releases, as well as to improve existing features or introduce new functionality to WordPress users.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, you can expect to see at least some new new update notifications for WordPress plugins every.
The reason for this, is because most plugins for WordPress are created by 3rd-party developers, so sometimes the code in the newly-released WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were developed and tested with a previous version. When this happens, there is a potential for conflicts to sometimes occur.
Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are fairly proactive when it comes to ensuring that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if required). All you have to do on your end, is maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is very easy and simple to do.
Keeping your plugins up-to-date and removing old plugins you no longer use is part of good WordPress management and helps to avoid any potential conflicts and errors.
The tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins safely with no web coding knowledge required.
How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins In WordPress – Tutorial
WordPress uses several ways to let you know when your plugins need updating.
For example, you can instantly see how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Dashboard just by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
In the screenshot below, 9 plugins need to be updated …
You can also check how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Notification Toolbar (the example below shows that a number of plugins should be brought up to date) …
The Plugins page (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also lets you know which plugins need to be updated …
In addition to providing information about plugins that have available updates, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin download pages and gives you the option to update the plugins instantly …
Let’s start by learning how to update individual plugins.
Upgrade Single WordPress Plugins
Always make a complete backup of your site files and database before making any changes to your website.
From your main menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
You will be taken to the “Plugins” page. This table of plugins can be quite lengthy depending on the number of plugins you have added to your site …
(Plugins Page)
Useful 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 area and type in a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show up on the screen by default), then click Apply …
Your Plugins area 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 “Search Installed Plugins” function …
You will see information about plugins in different backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (active vs. inactive and out-of-date vs up-to-date) …
Plugins that need updating show the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] available” …
Locate the plugin that needs updating and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides simple plugin updating, so that updating your plugins happens “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 upgrade all plugins at once.
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Now that you know how to upgrade one plugin at a time, it’s time to learn how to upgrade a bunch of plugins simultaneously.
How To Upgrade Multiple Plugins Simultaneously
To bulk-update WP plugins directly inside your dashboard, go to the “Plugins” section and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Click on the checkbox in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to upgrade by checking its box …
In the Bulk Actions dropdown menu above the table of plugins, select Update …
Click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will begin updating …
After all updates have completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to the Plugins area, or select another option from the sidebar menu …
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” messages 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 messages do not display)
Now that you know how to update your plugins, it’s time to learn how to safely delete plugins safely from your blog or website.
Deleting Plugins
At times, you may choose to delete WP plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This helps to conserve resources on your server and also eliminates potential problems.
In this section, we show you how to remove unused plugins from your WordPress blog or site.
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 reinstall your site.
To delete a plugin, go to your WP admin menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins area, locate the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is deactivated.
Hint: Inactive plugins appear in a different colored background than active plugins and display 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 want 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 …
A complete list of files associated with the plugin selected for removalwill display on your screen …
If you are absolutely sure about going ahead and deleting the selected plugin, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugin(s) 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 removed.
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) …
Next, select Deactivate from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …
Click Apply …
The 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 deleted, select 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 remove all of the plugins listed …
Your selected plugins will be deleted …
Plugin Management – Tools
As well as the methods shown above, you can use WordPress plugins 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.
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