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In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping all WordPress plugins up-to-date, how to safely upgrade and uninstall plugins, and discover practical plugin management tips.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Some Of Your Plugins Need Upgrading
The WordPress software is regularly updated (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in previous software releases, and to improve existing features or introduce new ones.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, there will typically be new new update notifications for WordPress plugins every.
This is because most plugins for WordPress are created by third-party developers, so sometimes code in the new WordPress version conflict with plugins that were developed for a previous version. Whenever this happens, problems 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 needed). All you have to do on your end, is just maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is really easy to do.
Keeping your plugins regularly updated and removing old plugins you no longer use is part of good WordPress management and helps to avoid any problems and errors.
The step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins safely in WordPress without requiring web coding or programming knowledge.
How To Upgrade And Delete Plugins Safely From Your Dashboard – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress has several methods of letting you know when plugins on your blog need updating.
For example, you can instantly see how many plugins need to be updated as soon as you log into your WordPress Dashboard just by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, nine WP plugins need to be updated …
You can also check how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Toolbar (as shown below, several plugins need updating) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also notifies you about plugins that need to be updated …
In addition to providing information about which plugins have updates available, the Plugins page provides links to the plugin download pages and gives you the option to update your plugins with one-click …
Let’s start by showing you how to upgrade individual plugins.
Upgrade Plugins One At A Time
We recommend making a full backup of your site files and database before upgrading your website.
From your WP admin menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
You will be taken to the “Plugins” section. This table of plugins can be quite long depending on the number of plugins you have installed in your site …
(WordPress Plugins Screen)
Tips:
If you have too many plugins installed 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 enter 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 page 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 “Search” box …
You will see information about plugins in different backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (inactive vs. active and up-to-date vs. out-of-date) …
Plugins in need of upgrading have a distinctive 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 faster plugin updates, so that updating your plugins takes place “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins area …
Repeat this process for all plugins on your site that need to be updated, or see the section below if you have a number of plugins that are out-of-date and would like to upgrade all plugins at the same time.
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Now that you know how to update individual WP plugins, let’s show you how to bulk-upgrade plugins.
Bulk-Updating WP Plugins
To bulk-update WordPress plugins using the automatic upgrade feature, go to the “Plugins” page and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Tick the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to upgrade by checking its box …
In the Bulk Actions pull-down menu at the top of the page, choose Update …
Click Apply …
Your selected plugins will update all at once …
After all plugin upgrades are finished, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to the Plugins screen, or select another option from the main menu …
Once all plugins are up-to-date, the update reminders 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 are now up-to-date!
(When plugins on your site are up-to-date, update icons no longer show)
Now that you know how to automatically update your in your admin dashboard, it’s time to learn how to safely remove plugins safely from your WordPress site or blog.
Deleting WP Plugins
Occasionally, you may decide to remove WP plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This helps to decrease resources on your server and also helps to eliminate causes of problems.
In this section, we show you how to safely deactivate and delete unused plugins from your WordPress site or blog.
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 click on Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins page, find the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is deactivated.
Hint: Inactive plugins have 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 continuing with your plugin deletion …
Click on Delete …
If you would like to have a look at 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” screen …
All files associated with the plugin that you are about to remove will display on your screen …
If you are certain about going ahead and deleting the selected plugin files, click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugins and related files will be removed from your WordPress installation …
Deleting Several WordPress Plugins Simultaneously
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 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 checkbox, 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 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” page and click on the Inactive link in the Plugins menu …
Tick the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to remove by checking its box …
Once you have selected all the plugins that you want to delete, select Delete from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …
Click Apply …
A list of all selected plugins will be displayed 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 sure that you would like to proceed to the next step and remove all of the selected plugins …
Your selected plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
WP Plugin Management – Useful Tools
In addition to the methods shown above, you can install a number of 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.
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