In a previous post, we provide an overview of what plugins are about and how you can use these to easily enhance your blog’s capabilities.
To read the article, go here:
In this tutorial you will learn why plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to upgrade and delete plugins from your site, and some tips to help you better manage your plugins if you currently own or manage multiple WordPress sites.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Some Of Your Plugins Need Regular Upgrading
The WordPress software is constantly updated (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in older software versions, 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 each time a new WordPress version is announced.
The reason for this, is because most WordPress plugins are created by external developers, so sometimes the code in the newly-released WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were created and tested to work with a previous version. Whenever this happens, there is a potential for problems to 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 this is required). All you have to do on your end, is maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is really easy and simple to do.
Keeping your plugins up-to-date and removing old plugins you no longer use is an essential aspect of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid any potential errors or conflicts.
The tutorial below explains how to update and delete plugins inside your WordPress admin dashboard without requiring web programming skills.
How To Update And Delete Plugins Inside Your Dashboard – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress provides a number of different ways to notify you when plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can instantly see how many plugins are out-of-date inside your WP Dashboard just by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that 9 WP plugins have older versions that need updating …
You can also check how many plugins need to be updated from your WordPress Toolbar (as shown below, a number of plugins should be updated) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also notifies you about plugins that need to be updated …
As well as 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 individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by learning how to upgrade WP plugins one at a time.
Upgrading WordPress Plugins Individually
We strongly recommend making a full backup of your data and files before upgrading your blog or website.
In your WP admin menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” page 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 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 screen), then click Apply …
Your Plugins page 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 Installed Plugins” field …
You will see information about plugins in different color backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (active vs. inactive and outdated vs up-to-date) …
Plugins in need of upgrading display 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 has done away with the loading screen when updating plugins and streamlined the plugin updating process, so that the process of updating your plugins takes place “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins screen …
Repeat this process for all plugins on your site that need to be updated, or see the section below if you have many 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 WordPress plugins one at a time, the next step is to learn how to bulk-update WordPress plugins.
Bulk-Updating WP Plugins
To bulk-upgrade WP plugins simultaneously directly inside your dashboard, go to the “Plugins” screen and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Click on the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to upgrade by checking their individual boxes …
In the Bulk Actions pull-down menu above your plugin list, select Update …
Click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will begin updating …
After your plugins have all been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to the Plugins area, or select another section of your dashboard …
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) …
All plugins have now been updated to their latest versions!
(When your plugins are all up-to-date, notification icons no longer show)
Now that you know how to upgrade WordPress inside the admin dashboard, let’s take a look at how to uninstall plugins from your blog or website.
How To Safely Remove Plugins
At times, you may decide to delete plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This helps to reduce server resources and also will help you avoid potential problems.
In this section, you will learn how to safely delete unused plugins from your WordPress blog or site.
Always create 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 restore your site.
To delete a plugin, go to your dashboard menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins area, find the plugin you want to delete and make sure it is inactive.
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, then click on Deactivate before going any further …
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” section …
All files associated with the plugin that you are about to delete will be listed on your screen …
If you are sure that you would like to go ahead and delete the selected plugin files, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugin(s) will be removed from your WordPress installation …
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 cleared.
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 checkbox, 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 Apply …
The selected plugins will be deactivated …
To delete all or some of the inactive plugins, go to the “Plugins” section and click on the Inactive link on the main menu …
Select all of the plugins you want to delete by either placing a tick next to their checkbox, or click on the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select and delete all inactive plugins …
Once you have ticked all the checkboxes next to the plugins that you want to delete, choose Delete from the Bulk Actions pull-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 absolutely sure that you would like to proceed to the next step and remove all of the plugins listed …
All selected plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
Managing WP Plugins – Tools
As well as the methods shown above, you can use a range of 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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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group