In another blog post, we provide an overview of what plugins are all about and how you can use plugins to easily increase your website’s capabilities.
To view the article, go here:
In this tutorial you will learn why WordPress plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins from your site, and discover some great plugin management tips.
Why Your Plugins Need To Be Regularly Upgraded
New versions of WordPress are regularly released (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in older versions, as well as to improve existing features or introduce new functionality to users.
Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, you can expect to see at least some new updates for WordPress plugins each time a new version of WordPress is made available.
The reason for this, is because most plugins for WordPress are created by external developers, so sometimes 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 issues to sometimes develop.
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 updating is needed). All you need to do as a WordPress user, is maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is really easy to do.
Keeping your WordPress plugins regularly updated and deleting old plugins you no longer use is part of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid any potential errors and problems.
The WordPress step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete WordPress plugins with no web programming skills necessary.
How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely In Your Dashboard – Tutorial
WordPress employs a few ways to notify you when plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can tell immediately how many plugins need to be updated inside your WP Dashboard 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 to be updated …
You can also see how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Administration Toolbar (as shown below, several plugins have to be updated) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also notifies you about plugins that need updating …
As well as providing information about which plugins have available updates, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin developer sites and gives you the option to update the plugin with one-click …
Let’s start by learning how to upgrade individual plugins.
Upgrading Individual Plugins
Always make a full backup of your data and files before upgrading your blog or website.
From your dashboard menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” screen will display in your browser. The table of plugins can run down your page for some length, depending on how many plugins you have added to your site …
(Plugins Section)
Additional Info:
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 page and type in a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show up on the screen by default), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
Your Plugins page 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 “Search” function …
WordPress displays plugin information in different backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (inactive vs. active and outdated vs up-to-date) …
Plugins that require updating have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin Name] available” …
Select the plugin that you want to update and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides faster plugin updating, so that the process of updating your plugins happens “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat the above process for all 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 them all in one simple operation.
***
Now that you know how to upgrade WP plugins individually, the next step is to learn how to update a bunch of plugins simultaneously.
How To Update Various WP Plugins
To upgrade multiple WordPress plugins in one go 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 …
Tick the checkbox 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 dropdown menu at the top of the page, select Update …
Click Apply …
Your selected plugins will automatically begin updating …
After all updates are done, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to your Plugins screen, or choose another section of your dashboard …
Once your plugins are all up-to-date, the plugin notifications 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 to their latest version!
(When plugins on your site are up-to-date, the notification icons do not display)
Now that you know how to update plugins, it’s time to learn how to remove plugins safely from your WordPress site.
How To Safely Remove WP Plugins
It’s a good idea to uninstall inactive plugins. This helps to decrease resources on your server and also helps to eliminate causes of problems.
In this section, you will learn how to safely delete unused plugins from your WordPress blog or 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 reinstall your site.
To remove a plugin, go to your dashboard menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins screen, locate the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is inactive.
Hint: Inactive plugins appear in a different background color than active plugins and display an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, click on Deactivate before continuing with your plugin deletion …
Next, click Delete …
If you would like to browse all the files that will be deleted before going ahead, 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 belonging to the plugin selected for deletionwill display on your screen …
If you are absolutely sure about going ahead and deleting these plugin files, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugin(s) will be removed from your server …
How To Safely Delete Multiple WP Plugins In Bulk
You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be deleted.
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 check box, or selecting the check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …
Once you have done this, select Deactivate from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …
Click the Apply button …
Your 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 check box 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, choose Delete from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …
Click Apply …
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 …
All selected plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
WordPress Management Tools For WordPress Plugins
In addition to the methods shown above, you can use Free and Paid 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.
***
"I love the way your email series "Infinite Web Content Creation Training Series" is documented and presented. It is very absorbing and captivating. The links and tutorials are interesting and educational. This has motivated me to rewrite my content following the concepts I am learning from the email series." - Mani Raju, www.fortuneinewaste.com