In another article, we explain what plugins are and how you can use these to add new features or functionality to your site without editing code.
You can view the article here:
In this tutorial you will learn why WordPress plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to safely upgrade and remove your WordPress plugins, and practical plugin management tips if you need to run multiple WordPress sites.
Why Your Plugins Need Updating
New WordPress versions are constantly being released (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in older software releases, as well as to improve existing features or introduce new functionality to WordPress users.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, there will typically be new updates for plugins each time a new WordPress version is made available.
The reason for this, is because most WordPress plugins are created by third-party developers, so sometimes code or features in the new WordPress version conflict with plugins that were built for a previous version. When this happens, problems can sometimes develop.
Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are fairly proactive when it comes to ensuring that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if this is needed). All you have to do on your end, is just keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is really simple to do.
Keeping your WordPress plugins regularly updated and removing old plugins you no longer need is part of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid potential errors and conflicts.
The step-by-step tutorial below explains how to update and delete WordPress plugins without requiring web programming knowledge.
How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely – Tutorial
WordPress has a few methods of letting users know when plugins on their blog need updating.
For example, you can instantly see how many plugins need updating as soon as you log into your Admin area just by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
In the screenshot below, you can see that 9 plugins have older versions that need to be updated …
You can also tell how many plugins need to be updated from your WordPress Toolbar (the screenshot below shows that nine plugins need to be updated) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also provides information about plugins that need to be updated …
As well as providing information about plugins that have available updates, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin download sites and gives you the option to update your plugin instantly …
Let’s start by learning how to upgrade plugins one at a time.
How To Upgrade Individual WordPress Plugins
We strongly recommend making a complete backup of your data and files before making any updates to your website.
From your dashboard menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” area will display in your browser. The table of plugins can go down your screen for a while, depending on the number of plugins you have installed in your blog …
(WordPress Plugins Section)
Additional Information:
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 area and enter a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show up on the screen by default), then click Apply …
Your Plugins area 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 “Plugin Search” box …
You will see plugin information in different color backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (active vs. inactive and out-of-date vs up-to-date) …
Plugins in need of upgrading have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] available” …
Find the plugin that needs to be updated and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides streamlined plugin updates, so that updating your plugins takes place “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat the above process for all plugins on your site that need updating, or refer to the section below if you have several plugins that are out-of-date and would like to upgrade all plugins in one simple operation.
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Now that you know how to upgrade individual WordPress plugins, let’s show you how to update multiple plugins simultaneously.
How To Bulk-Upgrade Plugins
To update multiple WP plugins in a single operation using the automatic updating feature, go to the “Plugins” area and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Click the check box in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to update by checking its box …
In the Bulk Actions drop-down menu above the list of plugins, select Update …
Click Apply …
Your selected plugins will begin updating …
After all updates are completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to the Plugins section, or select another option from the main menu …
Once all plugins are up-to-date, any plugin alerts will disappear (i.e. the “at-a-glance” indicators and “There is a new version of XYZ plugin available” messages no longer display) …
All plugins are now up-to-date!
(When plugins on your site are up-to-date, the notification icons do not display)
Now that you know how to upgrade WP in your dashboard, it’s time to learn how to delete plugins safely from your site or blog.
Deleting WordPress Plugins
At times, you may decide to remove plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This helps to reduce resources on your server and also help to eliminate problems.
In this section, you will learn how to remove unused plugins from your WordPress blog or site.
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 delete a plugin, go to your admin menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins page, locate the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is inactive.
Hint: Inactive plugins use a different colored background than active plugins and display an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, click on Deactivate before proceeding with your plugin deletion …
Click Delete …
If you need 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” screen …
A complete list of files belonging to the plugin selected for removalwill be listed on your screen …
If you are absolutely certain about going ahead and deleting the selected plugin, click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugin(s) will be deleted …
How To Safely Delete Multiple Plugins In Bulk
You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be uninstalled.
Note: To delete any plugins that are presently active, your will 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 checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …
Next, select 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” screen 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 check box, or click on the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select and delete all inactive plugins …
Once you have selected all the plugins that you want to delete, specify Delete from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …
Click Apply …
A list of all selected plugins will display 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 absolutely sure that you want to proceed to the next step and remove all of the plugins listed …
The plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
Management Tools For WP Plugins
As well as the methods shown above, you can install a range of 3rd-party tools that let you manage your plugins.
PLUGIN CENTRAL
Plugin Central improves the management of your plugins by allowing you to install plugins directly, displays the status of plugins in need of update on your WP Admin and lets you update multiple plugins with a single click of the mouse …
To learn more about this plugin, visit the plugin site:
Managing WordPress Plugins On Multiple Sites
Whenever plugin developers release a new plugin update, the best practice is to update that plugin to its most recent version as soon as possible.
What if you run multiple sites using the same plugin? Typically, you would have to login to every site and then go through the plugin update process from that site’s own WordPress dashboard. With multiple sites, this process can take quite some time to complete!
WordPress Power User Tip: If you own multiple WordPress sites or blogs, you can install, upgrade or delete plugins on all of your sites automatically and simultaneously using a number of WordPress management tools.
Here are a few WordPress management tools you should check out:
Jetpack
The Jetpack plugin is a versatile plugin for WordPress that offers users a powerful range of features, allowing self-hosted WordPress site users to access WordPress.com’s infrastructure and take advantage of stats reporting, easy social sharing, and many other great features.
(The Jetpack Plugin lets you access a range of powerful WordPress.com features)
One of these features is “Jetpack Manage”.
Jetpack Manage allows you to manage your self-hosted WordPress sites and WordPress.com sites from one dashboard on WordPress.com.
With Manage, you can update plugins, set plugins to update automatically, and activate or deactivate plugins on a per-site basis or all at once, whether you’re on your PC, tablet, or mobile device.
For more information about using this plugin, visit this site:
ManageWP
(ManageWP is a very popular WordPress management tool for multiple WP sites)
ManageWP lets you easily manage all of your sites from one place, including updates, backups, security and more. This tool features easy and intuitive one-click updates and instant login to your WordPress sites.
Visit this site to download and use this plugin:
WP Pipeline.com
(WP Pipeline lets you update all of your WordPress sites, plugins and themes from a single location)
WP Pipeline works in a similar way to ManageWP, but sells for a one-time license fee instead of recurring payments. It lets you control and organize your entire online WordPress presence and perform multiple updates from a single location.
Go here to download and use the plugin:
Congratulations! Now you know how to update and delete plugins without editing web code.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)