In another blog post, we provide a detailed explanation of what WordPress plugins are about and how you can use plugins to enhance your site’s capabilities.
To read the article, go here:
In this tutorial you will learn why 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 if you currently own or manage multiple WordPress sites.
Why Many Plugins Need Frequent Updating
The WordPress software is regularly updated (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in previous releases, as well as to improve existing features.
Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, you can expect to see at least some new new update notices for plugins every.
The reason for this, is because most WordPress plugins are created by 3rd-party developers, so sometimes the code in the new WordPress version conflict with plugins that were developed for a previous version. Whenever this happens, there is a potential for problems to sometimes occur.
Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are very 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 just maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is very quick, simple and easy 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 step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins safely in the dashboard without touching web code.
Upgrading And Deleting Plugins From The Dashboard – Tutorial
WordPress uses several ways to alert users when plugins need updating.
For example, you can see how many plugins need to be updated inside your Administration area just by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, nine plugins need to be updated …
You can also check how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Admin Toolbar (the example below shows that a number of plugins should be updated) …
The Plugins screen (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also lets you know which plugins need updating …
As well as providing information about plugins that have updates available, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin download sites and gives you the option to update your plugin individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by showing you how to upgrade WP plugins one at a time.
Upgrading WordPress Plugins Individually
Always make a backup of your website before upgrading your blog or website.
From your main menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
You will be taken to the “Plugins” section. The table of plugins can be quite long depending on the number of plugins you have added to your blog …
(The WordPress Plugins Screen)
Useful 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 (all plugins show up on the page by default), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
Your Plugins page 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 information about plugins in different color backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (inactive vs. active and up-to-date vs. out-of-date) …
Plugins that require upgrading have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin Name] available” …
Find 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 happens “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat this 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 upgrade them all at the same time.
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Now that you know how to upgrade individual plugins, it’s time to learn how to upgrade a bunch of plugins simultaneously.
How To Bulk-Upgrade WordPress Plugins
To bulk-upgrade plugins simultaneously 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 check box next to 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 drop down menu at the top of the page, choose Update …
Click Apply …
Your selected plugins will automatically begin to update …
After all updates are finished, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to the Plugins section, or choose a different section of your dashboard …
Once all plugins are up-to-date, the update reminders 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!
(When your site uses the latest version of all plugins, the notification icons disappear)
Now that you know how to automatically update WP in the WP dashboard, it’s time to learn how to remove plugins from your site or blog.
Deleting Plugins
Occasionally, you may decide to remove WordPress plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This can reduce resource usage and will help you avoid causes of some problems.
In this section, we show you how to safely delete unused plugins from your 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 restore your site.
To remove a plugin, go to your dashboard menu and choose Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins page, locate the plugin you want to delete and make sure it is deactivated.
Hint: Inactive plugins are listed in 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 going any further …
Once you have deactivated the plugin, click Delete …
If you need to have a look at 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” page …
The entire list of files associated with the plugin that you are about to delete will display on your screen …
If you are sure that you want to go ahead and delete these plugin files, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugin(s) will be removed from your WordPress installation …
How To Safely Delete Several WP Plugins Simultaneously
You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be removed.
Note: To delete any plugins that are currently 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 checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …
Once you have done this, specify Deactivate from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …
Click the Apply button …
Your selected plugins will be deactivated …
To delete all or some of the inactive plugins, go to the “Plugins” page and click on the Inactive link in the Plugins menu …
Select all of the plugins you want to delete by either placing a tick next to their checkbox, or click on the check box next to the Plugin column header to select and delete all inactive plugins …
Once you have selected all of 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 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 absolutely certain that you want 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 …
Management Tools For Plugins
As well as the methods shown above, you can use a range 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.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now