In a previous post, we provide an overview of what plugins are all about and how you can use these to easily extend your blog’s capabilities.
To read this article, go here:
In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping WordPress plugins up-to-date, how to automatically upgrade and uninstall your WordPress plugins, and discover useful tools to help you better manage your plugins if you plan to own or manage multiple WordPress sites.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why WordPress Plugins Need To Be Frequently Updated
The WordPress software is regularly updated (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in older software versions, and to improve existing features.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, there will typically be new new update notifications for WordPress plugins each time a new version of WordPress is announced.
This is because most plugins for WordPress are created by third-party developers, so sometimes the code in the new WordPress version conflict with plugins that were created and tested to work with a previous version. When this happens, conflicts can 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 updating is required). All you have to do on your end, is maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is really simple, quick and easy to do.
Keeping your plugins up-to-date and removing old plugins you no longer need is part of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid any conflicts and errors.
The tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins safely in the WP admin dashboard without requiring coding knowledge or skills.
Updating And Deleting Plugins In WordPress – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress employs a few ways of letting users know when plugins need updating.
For example, you can tell immediately how many plugins are out-of-date from your Admin area just by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, 9 plugins need updating …
You can also view how many plugins need updating from your WP Notification Toolbar (the example below shows that several plugins need to be updated) …
The Plugins page (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also provides information about plugins that need updating …
As well as providing information about plugins that have available updates, the Plugins screen provides links to the plugin developer sites and gives you the option to update your plugins instantly …
Let’s start by learning how to update plugins one at a time.
Upgrade Individual A Plugin
We strongly recommend performing a full backup of your website before updating your website or blog.
In your main menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” screen will display in your browser. The list of plugins can run down your screen for a while, depending on how many plugins you have installed in your blog …
(The WordPress Plugins Page)
Useful Information:
If you have too many plugins and would like to reduce the number of plugins showing on the page, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins area and type in 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 reduced in size with a ’numbered pages’ feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search” function …
You will see information about plugins in different color backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (active vs. inactive and up-to-date vs. out-of-date) …
Plugins in need of upgrading display the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin Name] available” …
Locate the plugin that needs to be updated and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides smooth & simple plugin updates, so that the process of updating your plugins happens “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat the above process for any other plugins on your site that need updating, or see the section below if you have many plugins that are out-of-date and would like to update them all in one simple operation.
***
Now that you know how to update plugins individually, it’s time to learn how to upgrade several WordPress plugins simultaneously.
Bulk-Upgrading Plugins
To bulk-update WordPress plugins directly inside your dashboard, go to the “Plugins” page and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Tick the check box in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to update by checking their individual boxes …
In the Bulk Actions pull-down menu above your plugin table, choose Update …
And then click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will begin updating …
Once all updates have completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to the Plugins section, or go to a different 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” messages no longer display) …
You have updated all plugins on your site to their latest version!
(When plugins on your site are up-to-date, update notices do not display)
Now that you know how to upgrade your in your dashboard, let’s take a look at how to uninstall plugins from your WordPress blog or website.
Deleting WP Plugins
It’s a good idea to delete plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This decreases resource usage and help to minimize potential 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 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 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, then click on Deactivate before continuing with your plugin deletion …
Once you have deactivated the plugin, click Delete …
If you need to review a list of all the files that will be deleted before taking the next step, then click on the “Click to view entire list of files which will be deleted” link in the “Delete Plugin” screen …
All files belonging to the plugin selected for deletionwill display on your screen …
If you are certain about going ahead and deleting the selected plugin files, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugin(s) will be deleted from your server …
Bulk-Deleting WordPress Plugins
You can delete all inactive plugins at once, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be uninstalled.
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 checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …
Once you have done this, choose 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 on your site, go to the “Plugins” area 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 checkbox 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, select Delete from the Bulk Actions drop-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 absolutely sure that you want to proceed to the next step and remove all of the plugins listed …
Your plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
Management Tools For Plugins
In addition to the methods shown above, you can install a number 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.
***
"Your training is the best in the world! It is simple, yet detailed, direct, understandable, memorable, and complete." Andrea Adams, FinancialJourney.org