Tag: WP Plugins

In a separate post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use plugins to increase your website’s functionality.

To view this article, go here:

• Using WP Plugins To Improve Your Website’s Features

In this tutorial you will learn why WordPress plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to upgrade and remove plugins, and discover practical plugin management tools if you manage multiple WordPress sites.

Why Your WordPress Plugins Need Upgrading

WordPress constantly updates its software (about every 3-4 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 new update notices for WordPress plugins each time a new version of WordPress is made available.

This is because most WordPress plugins are created by third-party developers, so sometimes code or features in the newly-released WordPress version conflict with plugins that were developed and tested with a previous version. When this happens, conflicts can sometimes occur.

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 needed). All you need to do as a website owner, is simply maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is very simple and easy to do.

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

The WordPress step-by-step tutorial below explains how to upgrade and delete plugins in your WordPress dashboard without web programming knowledge or skills needed.

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins – Tutorial

WordPress utilizes a number of different methods to alert you when plugins need to be updated.

For example, you can tell immediately how many plugins are out-of-date inside your Admin area simply by looking at the “Plugins” menu.

For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that nine WordPress plugins have older versions that need updating …

You can also tell how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Administration Toolbar (as shown below, several plugins should be updated) …

The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also lets you know which plugins need updating …

As well as providing information about which plugins have updates available, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin download pages and gives you the option to update the plugin with one-click …

Let’s start by learning how to upgrade plugins individually.

How To Upgrade Individual A Plugin

We strongly recommend performing a complete backup of your data and files before updating your website.

From your admin menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …

You will be taken to the “Plugins” page. The list of plugins can be quite long depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site …

(The WordPress Plugins Screen)

Useful Tips:

If you have too many plugins and would like to reduce the number of plugins displaying on the screen, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins area and enter a smaller number of items per page (by default, all plugins display on the page), then click Apply …

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 “Search Installed Plugins” feature …

You will see plugin information in different backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (active vs. inactive and outdated vs up-to-date) …

Plugins that need updating have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] available” …

Locate 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 process, so that the process of updating your plugins happens with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins area …

Repeat the above process for any other plugins on your site that need updating, or see the section below if you have several plugins that are out-of-date and would like to upgrade all plugins at once.

***

Now that you know how to update individual WordPress plugins, the next step is to learn how to bulk-upgrade WordPress plugins.

How To Bulk-Upgrade Plugins

To update multiple WP plugins in a single operation using the automatic upgrade feature, go to the “Plugins” section and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …

Tick 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 dropdown menu above the table of plugins, select Update …

And then click Apply …

The plugins you have selected will begin the update process …

Once all upgrades are finished, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to the Plugins section, or select another section of your dashboard …

Once your plugins are all 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) …

All plugins are now up-to-date!

(When your plugins are up-to-date, the notification icons do not display)

Now that you know how to update your in the admin dashboard, let’s take a look at how to uninstall plugins safely from your blog or website.

Deleting WP Plugins

At times, you may decide to delete plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This reduces resources on your server and also eliminate causes of 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 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 main menu and choose Plugins > Installed Plugins …

In the Plugins area, find the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is inactive.

Hint: Inactive plugins use a different background color than active plugins and display an “Activate” link below the plugin name …

If the plugin is active, then click on Deactivate before continuing with your plugin deletion …

Click on Delete …

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

The entire list of files belonging to the plugin that you are about to remove will be listed on your screen …

If you are positively certain that you want to proceed and delete the selected plugin files, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …

Your plugins and related files will be removed from your server …

Bulk-Deleting WordPress 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, 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 checkbox, or selecting the check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …

Next, specify Deactivate from the Bulk Actions drop down 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 …

Tick the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to remove by checking their individual boxes …

Once you have selected all the plugins that you want to delete, specify Delete from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …

Click Apply …

A list of all selected plugins will display 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 go ahead and delete all of the selected plugins …

All selected 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 Free and Premium WordPress plugins 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.

***