How To Update WordPress Plugins

Learn how to easily update all of your plugins inside your WordPress dashboard…

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely From Your DashboardIn another post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use plugins to easily extend your blog’s capabilities.

You can view this article here:

In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn why WordPress plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to automatically upgrade and uninstall plugins, and discover useful tools to help you better manage your plugins.

Why Your Plugins Need Updating

New WordPress versions are constantly being released (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in earlier software versions, and to improve existing features or introduce new functionality to users.

Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, you can expect to see at least some new new update notices for plugins every.

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

Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are fairly proactive when it comes to making sure that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if needed). All you have to do as a WordPress user, is simply maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is very quick, simple and easy to do.

Useful Information

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

The WordPress tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins without web coding skills required.

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely From Your Dashboard – Tutorial

WordPress provides a number of different methods to notify you when plugins need updating.

For example, you can see how many plugins need to be updated as soon as you log into your Administration panel just by looking at the “Plugins” menu.

In the example below, you can see that 9 WP plugins have older versions that need updating …

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely From The WordPress Admin Dashboard

You can also see how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Notification Toolbar (in the screenshot below, you can see how many plugins should be brought up to date) …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely Inside The WP Dashboard

The Plugins page (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you which plugins need to be updated …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely From The Dashboard

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

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely

Let’s start by showing you how to upgrade one plugin at a time.

Upgrading Plugins Individually

Warning

Always make a complete backup of your data and files before updating your website or blog.

In your WP admin menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely In WordPress

You will be taken to the “Plugins” section. This table of plugins can be quite lengthy depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely Inside The Dashboard

(Plugins Screen)

Useful Tip

Useful Tips:

If you have too many plugins installed 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 page and type in a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show on the page by default), then click Apply …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely Inside Your Dashboard

Your Plugins section will now be reduced in size with a page scrolling feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Plugin Search” field …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins In WordPress

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

Updating And Deleting Plugins

Plugins in need of updating show the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin Name] available”

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Inside Your Dashboard

Locate the plugin that needs to be updated and click on the update now link …

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely In WordPress

WordPress has done away with the loading screen when updating plugins and streamlined the process, so that updating your plugins happens “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins area …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely From The WP Dashboard

Repeat the above process for all plugins on your site that need updating, or see the section below if you have a number of plugins that are out-of-date and would like to upgrade them all in bulk.

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Now that you know how to upgrade plugins one at a time, let’s show you how to bulk-upgrade WordPress plugins.

How To Bulk-Update WordPress Plugins

To upgrade multiple WordPress plugins at the same time using the automatic upgrade feature, go to the “Plugins” screen and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely

Tick the checkbox in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to update by checking its box …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

In the Bulk Actions pull-down menu above the table of plugins, choose Update

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely Inside The Dashboard

And then click Apply

How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins In The Dashboard

The plugins you have selected will automatically begin updating …

How To Update And Delete Plugins

Once all updates have been completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to the Plugins screen, or select another option from the dashboard menu …

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely

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) …

How To Upgrade And Delete WordPress Plugins Safely From The WP Dashboard

You have updated all plugins on your site!

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely From Your WP Dashboard

(When your site uses the latest version of all plugins, update icons no longer display)

Now that you know how to update your plugins, it’s time to learn how to uninstall plugins safely from your site.

How To Remove Plugins

Occasionally, you may want to delete plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This can help to reduce server resources and helps to eliminate potential problems.

In this section, we show you how to safely uninstall unused plugins from your WordPress site.

Warning

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 dashboard menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins

How To Upgrade And Delete WordPress Plugins In Your WP Admin Dashboard

In the Plugins screen, locate the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is deactivated.

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

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely In WordPress

If the plugin is active, then click on Deactivate before proceeding …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely From Your WordPress Admin Dashboard

Click Delete

Updating And Deleting Plugins Inside Your WordPress Admin Dashboard

If you would like to have a look at 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” section …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely In WordPress

The entire list of files belonging to the plugin selected for removalwill display on your screen …

Updating And Deleting Plugins In WordPress

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

Updating And Deleting Plugins In Your Dashboard

The selected plugins and related files will be deleted from your server …

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely In WordPress

How To Safely Bulk-Delete WordPress Plugins

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

Important

Note: To delete any plugins that are currently active, you must first 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) …

How To Automatically Update And Delete Plugins Inside The Dashboard

Next, specify Deactivate from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely From Your WordPress Admin Dashboard

Click the Apply button …

Updating And Deleting WordPress Plugins

All selected plugins will be deactivated …

How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins Inside Your WordPress Admin Dashboard

To delete all or some of the inactive plugins on your site, go to the “Plugins” page and click on the Inactive link in the Plugins menu …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins Safely In WordPress

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 …

Updating And Deleting Plugins Inside Your WP Dashboard

Once you have ticked all the check boxes next to the plugins that you want deleted, choose Delete from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

Click the Apply button …

Upgrading And Deleting Plugins

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 absolutely certain that you want to go ahead and delete all of the plugins listed …

How To Update And Delete Plugins In WordPress

Your plugins will be deleted …

How To Update And Delete Plugins Safely From The Dashboard

Managing WP Plugins

In addition to the methods shown above, you can use a range of tools to manage your plugins.

Health Check & troubleshooting

Health Check & Troubleshooting WordPress plugin
Health Check identifies common problems and helps you troubleshoot plugin and theme conflicts.

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

WPMU DEV's The Hub - Unlimited WordPress Site Management
WPMU DEV’s The Hub – Unlimited WordPress Site Management

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.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Updates menu

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.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Updates menu

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.

The Hub - Update notifications.
This feature can help you save a lot of time updating multiple WordPress sites, especially when WordPress releases a new version of its software.

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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