In another blog post, we provide an overview of what WP plugins are all about and how you can use these to add new features and functionality to your web site with no technical knowledge required.
You can read this article here:
In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping your plugins up-to-date, how to safely update and uninstall your WordPress plugins, and discover some great tips to help you better manage your plugins if you need to run multiple WordPress sites or blogs.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Your Plugins Need Updating
The WordPress software is constantly updated (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in earlier software releases, as well as to improve existing features.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, there will typically be new new update notices for WordPress plugins every.
The reason for this, is because most WordPress plugins are created by 3rd-party developers, so sometimes features in the newly-released WordPress version conflict with plugins that were developed for a previous version. Whenever this happens, issues can sometimes develop.
Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are very proactive when it comes to making sure that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if updating is needed). All you have to do as a WordPress user, is maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is really easy and simple 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 potential errors or conflicts.
The WordPress step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins without web coding knowledge or skills needed.
Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely From The WordPress Dashboard – Tutorial
WordPress provides several methods of letting you know when plugins on your site need to be updated.
For example, you can see ‘at a glance’ how many plugins need to be updated inside your Admin area simply by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, 9 WP plugins have older versions that need updating …
You can also check how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Administration Toolbar (the example below shows that several plugins have to be updated) …
The Plugins page (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also provides information about plugins that need updating …
In addition to providing information about which plugins have updates available, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin developer pages and gives you the option to update your plugin individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by showing you how to upgrade WP plugins one at a time.
Update Plugins One At A Time
Always make a full backup of your site files and database before making any updates to your website or blog.
From your admin menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” screen will display in your browser. This page can be quite long depending on how many plugins you have added to your blog …
(Plugins Screen)
Notes:
If you have too many plugins installed and would like to reduce the number of plugins showing on the screen, 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 page will now be made more manageable with a page scrolling feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search Installed Plugins” feature …
You will see information about plugins in different backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (active vs. inactive and outdated vs up-to-date) …
Plugins in need of updating show the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Insert Plugin Name] available” …
Locate the plugin that needs updating 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 this process for any other 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 update all plugins at once.
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Now that you know how to update WordPress plugins one at a time, let’s show you how to bulk-upgrade plugins.
How To Update Multiple WP Plugins Simultaneously
To bulk-upgrade WP plugins simultaneously from your admin area, go to the “Plugins” area 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 upgrade by checking their individual boxes …
In the Bulk Actions pull-down menu at the top of the page, choose Update …
Click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will update all at once …
Once your plugins have all been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to your Plugins section, or visit another section of your dashboard …
Once your plugins are all 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) …
All plugins are now up-to-date!
(When your site uses the latest version of all plugins, update alerts disappear)
Now that you know how to upgrade plugins, let’s take a look at how to delete plugins safely from your WordPress site.
Deleting Plugins
It’s a good idea to remove plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This helps to reduce resources on your server and help to minimize causes of some problems.
In this section, we show you how to safely remove unused plugins from your 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 reinstall your site.
To remove a plugin, go to your WP admin menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins screen, locate the plugin you want to delete and make sure it is inactive.
Hint: Inactive plugins have a different background color than active plugins and show an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, then click on Deactivate before continuing …
Next, click on Delete …
If you need to have a look at 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” section …
A complete list of files associated with the plugin that you are about to remove will be listed on your screen …
If you are absolutely certain that you would like to proceed and delete the selected plugin, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugin(s) will be deleted …
How To Bulk-Delete WordPress Plugins
You can delete all inactive plugins at once, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be removed.
Note: To delete any plugins that are currently 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 check box 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 Apply …
All 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 check box, or click on the check box next to the Plugin column header to select and delete all inactive plugins …
Once you have selected all the plugins that you want deleted, choose Delete from the Bulk Actions drop-down menu …
Click the Apply button …
A list of all selected plugins will be displayed 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 would like to proceed to the next step and remove all of the selected plugins …
Your plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
WordPress Management Tools For Plugins
In addition to the methods shown above, you can use Free and Premium WordPress plugins 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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