In a separate blog post, we provide a detailed explanation of what WP plugins are all about and how you can use plugins to easily expand your web site’s functionality.
To view this article, go here:
In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn why plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to upgrade and delete your WordPress plugins, and useful tools to help you better manage your plugins.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Some Plugins Need Regular Upgrading
New WordPress versions are regularly 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 ones.
Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, there will typically be 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 features in the newly-released WordPress version conflict with plugins that were developed for a previous version. Whenever this happens, conflicts can sometimes occur.
Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are quite 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 on your end, is maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is very simple and easy to do.
Keeping your WordPress plugins up-to-date and deleting old plugins you no longer need is part of good WordPress management and helps to avoid conflicts and errors.
The WordPress step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins safely without coding skills necessary.
Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely From The Dashboard – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress employs a few ways to notify users when plugins need updating.
For example, you can see how many plugins are out-of-date from your Site’s Dashboard by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, nine plugins have older versions that need to be updated …
You can also view how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Administration Toolbar (in the example below, you can see how many plugins need to be updated) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you what plugins need updating …
In addition to providing information about which plugins have updates available, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin download pages and gives you the option to update the plugin instantly …
Let’s start by learning how to upgrade one plugin at a time.
Upgrading Individual Plugins
Always make a full backup of your site files and database before updating your blog or website.
From your WP admin menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” screen will display in your browser. The list of plugins can flow down your screen for a while, depending on the number of plugins you have added to your site …
(The WordPress Plugins Page)
Useful Information:
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 on the page by default, i.e. “999”), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
Your Plugins section will now be made more manageable with a pagination feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search” box …
WordPress displays information about plugins in different color backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (inactive vs. active and outdated vs up-to-date) …
Plugins in need of updating show the following 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 smooth & simple plugin updates, so that updating your plugins takes place with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins area …
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 update all plugins in one simple operation.
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Now that you know how to upgrade individual WP plugins, let’s show you how to upgrade many WP plugins simultaneously.
Bulk-Updating WordPress Plugins
To update multiple plugins at the same time using the automatic update feature, go to the “Plugins” section and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Click the checkbox 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, select Update …
And then click Apply …
Your selected plugins will begin to update automatically …
Once all updates have been completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to your Plugins screen, or choose another option from the dashboard 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” notices no longer display on your screen, toolbar and menus) …
All plugins have now been upgraded!
(When your plugins are up-to-date, update alerts do not display)
Now that you know how to upgrade WP in your dashboard, let’s take a look at how to safely delete plugins safely from your WordPress site.
Deleting Plugins
Occasionally, you may decide to delete WordPress plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This can reduce resources on your server and also help to reduce causes of problems.
In this section, you will learn how to safely deactivate and delete unused plugins from your WordPress 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 WP admin menu and choose Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins page, find the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is deactivated.
Hint: Inactive plugins appear in 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 on Delete …
If you want to browse all the files that will be deleted before proceeding any further, then click on the “Click to view entire list of files which will be deleted” link in the “Delete Plugin” section …
All files associated with the plugin selected for deletionwill display on your screen …
If you are absolutely certain about going ahead and deleting the selected plugin files, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugin(s) will be deleted …
How To Safely Delete Multiple Plugins At Once
You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins on your site, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be uninstalled.
Note: To delete any plugins that are presently 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 checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …
Next, 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, go to the “Plugins” page 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 of the plugins that you want deleted, select Delete from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …
Click Apply …
A list of all selected plugins will show up 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 remove all of the plugins listed …
The plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
Plugin Management – Tools
As well as the methods shown above, you can install a range of tools to manage your WordPress 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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