In a separate blog post, we provide a detailed explanation of what plugins are about and how you can use these to easily expand your website’s capabilities.
To read the article, go here:
In this tutorial you will learn why WordPress plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to easily upgrade and remove plugins, and discover some plugin management tools if you run multiple WordPress sites or blogs.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Many Plugins Need Upgrading
WordPress regularly updates its software (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in previous versions, as well as to improve existing features.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, you can expect to see at least some new new update notifications for plugins each time a new WordPress version is made available.
The reason for this, is because most WordPress plugins are created by 3rd-party developers, so sometimes code or 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 fairly proactive when it comes to making sure that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if required). All you need to do as a WordPress user, is maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is really simple to do.
Keeping your WordPress plugins regularly updated and deleting old plugins you no longer need is an essential aspect of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid potential problems or errors.
The WordPress tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete WordPress plugins in the WP dashboard without requiring web coding knowledge.
Updating And Deleting Plugins In The Dashboard – Tutorial
WordPress has a few methods to notify you when plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can tell immediately how many plugins need updating as soon as you log into your Administration panel by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, 9 WordPress plugins have older versions that need to be updated …
You can also view how many plugins need to be updated from your WordPress Administration Toolbar (the example below shows that a number of plugins should be updated) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also provides information about plugins that need updating …
In addition to providing information about plugins that have updates available, the Plugins page provides links to the plugin download sites and gives you the option to update your plugin individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by showing you how to update individual plugins.
Upgrading Plugins One At A Time
Always make a complete backup of your website before making any changes to your website or blog.
From your main menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
You will be taken to the “Plugins” area. The list of plugins can be quite long depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site …
(Plugins Page)
Tips:
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 enter a smaller number of items per page (by default, all plugins display on the page), then click Apply …
Your Plugins area will now be reduced in size with a page scrolling feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Plugin Search” feature …
WordPress displays information about plugins in different backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (inactive vs. active and outdated vs up-to-date) …
Plugins in need of updating have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] available” …
Locate 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 this process for any other plugins on your site that need updating, or see the section below if you have a number of plugins that are out-of-date and would like to upgrade them all in bulk.
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Now that you know how to upgrade individual plugins, it’s time to learn how to bulk-upgrade WP plugins.
Bulk-Updating WordPress Plugins
To update multiple plugins in one go using the automatic upgrade feature, go to the “Plugins” section and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Click on the checkbox in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to update by checking its box …
In the Bulk Actions drop down menu above the plugin table, choose Update …
Click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will begin updating …
Once your plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to your Plugins screen, or go to a different section of your dashboard …
Once your plugins are all up-to-date, any plugin alerts 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) …
You have updated all plugins on your site!
(When plugins on your site are up-to-date, update notices do not display)
Now that you know how to automatically upgrade plugins, let’s show you how to safely remove plugins from your site or blog.
Deleting Plugins
As part of good site management practice, it’s a good idea to uninstall plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This can help decrease resource usage and help you avoid problems.
In this section, we show you how to uninstall unused plugins from your WordPress blog or site.
We strongly recommend creating 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 dashboard menu and click on Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins section, locate the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is deactivated.
Hint: Inactive plugins use a different colored background than active plugins and show an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, click on Deactivate before proceeding with your plugin deletion …
Once you have deactivated the plugin, click Delete …
If you would like 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” page …
A complete list of files associated with the plugin selected for deletionwill display on your screen …
If you are positively sure 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 from your server …
How To Bulk-Delete Plugins
You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins on your site, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be deleted.
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 check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …
Next, specify Deactivate from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …
Click the Apply button …
The selected plugins will be deactivated …
To delete all or some of the inactive plugins, 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 check box, 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 check boxes next to the plugins that you want to delete, specify Delete from the Bulk Actions pull-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 absolutely certain that you want to proceed to the next step and remove all of the selected plugins …
All selected 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 install a number of 3rd-party tools that let you 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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"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)