In another blog post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use these to easily enhance your blog’s functionality.
To view this article, go here:
In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping all WordPress plugins up-to-date, how to easily upgrade and delete plugins, and some great tools to help you better manage your plugins if you need to own or manage multiple WordPress sites or blogs.
Why Your Plugins Need To Be Frequently Upgraded
New versions of WordPress are frequently being released (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in previous software releases, and to improve existing features or introduce new functionality to users.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, there will typically be new new update notices for plugins each time a new version of WordPress is made available.
This is because most WordPress plugins are created by external developers, so sometimes code in the new WordPress version conflict with plugins that were developed for a previous version. When this happens, there is a potential for issues to 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 required). All you need to do on your end, is simply keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is really simple, quick and easy to do.
Keeping your WordPress plugins regularly updated and deleting old plugins you no longer need is part of good WordPress management and helps to avoid potential errors or conflicts.
The tutorial below explains how to upgrade and delete WordPress plugins in your WordPress dashboard without touching web code.
How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete WordPress Plugins In Your Dashboard – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress utilizes several ways of letting you know when your plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can instantly see how many plugins need updating as soon as you log into your Admin area by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that 9 WordPress plugins need to be updated …
You can also see how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Admin Toolbar (as shown below, a number of plugins require updating) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you which plugins need updating …
In addition to providing information about which plugins have updates available, the Plugins screen provides links to the plugin download sites and gives you the option to update the plugins with one-click …
Let’s start by showing you how to upgrade plugins one at a time.
Updating WordPress Plugins One At A Time
We strongly recommend performing a full backup of your site files and database before updating your website or blog.
From your dashboard menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
You will be taken to the “Plugins” area. This table of plugins can be quite lengthy depending on the number of plugins you have installed on your site …
(The WordPress Plugins Section)
Useful Tips:
If you have too many plugins installed and would like to make this section more manageable, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins area and enter a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show up on the page by default, i.e. “999”), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
Your Plugins page will now be made more manageable with a ’numbered pages’ feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search” box …
WordPress displays plugin information in different backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (active vs. inactive and up-to-date vs. outdated) …
Plugins in need of updating display the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] available” …
Select the plugin that you want to update and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides simple plugin updating, so that updating your plugins happens with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat this process for all plugins on your site that need to be updated, or refer to the section below if you have a number of plugins that are out-of-date and would like to update them all at once.
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Now that you know how to upgrade individual plugins, it’s time to learn how to upgrade multiple WP plugins simultaneously.
Bulk-Updating WP Plugins
To bulk-update plugins using the automatic upgrading feature, go to the “Plugins” area and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Click the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to update by checking their individual boxes …
In the Bulk Actions pull-down menu at the top of the page, choose Update …
And then click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will all be updated at once …
Once all plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to the Plugins screen, or select another option from the WordPress admin menu …
Once your plugins are all up-to-date, the update reminders 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) …
You have updated all plugins on your site to their latest version!
(When your site uses the latest version of all plugins, update alerts no longer display)
Now that you know how to automatically upgrade WP in your dashboard, let’s show you how to uninstall plugins from your WordPress site.
How To Safely Remove Plugins
It’s a good idea to delete inactive plugins. This can reduce resources on your server and also eliminates problems.
In this section, we show you how to deactivate and delete unused plugins from your WordPress site.
Always create 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 WP admin menu and click on Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins section, find 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 display an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, then click on Deactivate before going any further …
Next, click Delete …
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” page …
The entire list of files belonging to the plugin that you are about to delete will be listed on your screen …
If you are sure that you would like to go ahead and delete the selected plugin, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugin(s) will be deleted …
How To Delete Multiple Plugins In Bulk
You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins on your site, 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 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 Apply …
All selected plugins will be deactivated …
To delete all or some of the inactive plugins on your site, go to the “Plugins” area and click on the Inactive link on the main menu …
Tick the check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to remove by checking its box …
Once you have selected all of the plugins that you want deleted, specify Delete from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …
Click the Apply button …
A list of all selected plugins will be displayed 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 …
The 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 install a range of third-party tools 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.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group