In a previous blog post, we provide a detailed explanation of what plugins are about and how you can use these to easily enhance your blog’s capabilities.
To read the article, go here:
In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping WordPress plugins up-to-date, how to safely update and uninstall your WordPress plugins, and discover practical tips to help you better manage your plugins.
Why Many Of Your Plugins Need To Be Frequently Upgraded
The WordPress software is constantly updated (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 use on your site, you can expect to see at least some new new update notifications for WordPress plugins every.
The reason for this, is because most plugins for WordPress are created by external developers, so sometimes code in the new WordPress version conflict with plugins that were developed and tested with a previous version. Whenever this happens, there is a potential for problems to sometimes develop.
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 need to do as a website owner, is maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is really simple to do.
Keeping your plugins regularly updated and removing old plugins you no longer need is part of good WordPress management and helps to avoid problems and errors.
The WordPress step-by-step tutorial below explains how to upgrade and delete plugins safely in WordPress without requiring web coding or programming knowledge or skills.
How To Upgrade And Delete WordPress Plugins Safely – Tutorial
WordPress utilizes several methods of letting you know when plugins on your blog need updating.
For example, you can instantly see how many plugins are out-of-date as soon as you log into your Admin area by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
In the screenshot below, nine plugins are out of date and need to be updated …
You can also see how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Toolbar (as shown below, 9 plugins have to be updated) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you how many plugins need updating …
In addition to providing information about which plugins have available updates, the Plugins page provides links to the plugin download sites and gives you the option to update the plugins instantly …
Let’s start by learning how to update individual plugins.
Upgrade Individual Plugins
We recommend making a backup of your website before upgrading your website.
In your dashboard menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” screen will display in your browser. The list of plugins can go down your page for some length, depending on the number of plugins you have added to your blog …
(The WordPress Plugins Section)
Useful Info:
If you have too many plugins installed and would like to reduce the number of plugins displayed on the page, 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 on the page by default, i.e. “999”), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
Your Plugins section 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 “Plugin Search” box …
WordPress displays plugin information in different color backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (active vs. inactive and out-of-date vs up-to-date) …
Plugins that require upgrading have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Insert Plugin Name] available” …
Find the plugin that you want to update 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 “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins screen …
Repeat the above process for any other 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 upgrade them all at once.
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Now that you know how to upgrade individual WordPress plugins, it’s time to learn how to bulk-update WP plugins.
How To Bulk-Update Plugins
To bulk-update plugins simultaneously from your admin area, go to the “Plugins” screen and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Click on 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 dropdown menu above the table of plugins, choose Update …
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 your Plugins area, or choose another option from the WordPress dashboard 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” notices no longer display) …
All plugins are now up-to-date!
(When your site or blog uses the latest version of all plugins, notification icons no longer appear)
Now that you know how to automatically upgrade inside your WP dashboard, let’s take a look at how to uninstall plugins from your WordPress site.
How To Delete WordPress Plugins
As part of smart WordPress management, it’s a good idea to uninstall inactive plugins. This can help to reduce resource usage and also eliminate potential problems.
In this section, you will learn how to safely delete 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 reinstall your site.
To remove a plugin, go to your admin menu and choose Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins section, find the plugin you want to delete and make sure it is inactive.
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, then click on Deactivate before going any further …
Next, click Delete …
If you would like 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 …
A complete list of files associated with the plugin that you are about to delete will display on your screen …
If you are sure about going ahead and deleting these plugin, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugins and related files will be deleted …
How To Safely Delete Several Plugins At Once
You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be cleared.
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 checkbox, 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, specify Deactivate from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …
Click Apply …
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 …
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 checkboxes next to 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 display 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 sure that you want to go ahead and delete all of the plugins listed …
The selected plugins will be deleted …
Managing WordPress Plugins – Useful WordPress Tools
In addition to the methods shown above, you can install a range of 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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"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