In another article, we provide an overview of what plugins are about and how you can use plugins to easily add new features or functionality to your website with no technical knowledge required.
To view this article, go here:
In this tutorial you will learn why WordPress plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to upgrade and remove plugins, and discover useful plugin management tools.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Many Of Your WordPress Plugins Need To Be Upgraded
The WordPress software is constantly updated (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in earlier releases, and to improve existing features or introduce new functionality to WordPress users.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, there will typically be new new update notifications for plugins each time a new version of WordPress is released.
This is because most plugins for WordPress are created by external developers, so sometimes code in the new WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were created and tested to work with a previous version. When this happens, there is a potential for issues to sometimes occur.
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 updating is required). All you need to do on your end, is just maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is very quick, simple and easy to do.
Keeping your WordPress plugins regularly updated and removing old plugins you no longer use is part of good WordPress site management and helps to avoid any potential errors and problems.
The WordPress tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins in WordPress without requiring web programming skills or knowledge.
Updating And Deleting Plugins Safely Inside Your Dashboard – Tutorial
WordPress provides several methods of letting you know when your plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can see how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Dashboard just by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that 9 plugins need to be updated …
You can also view how many plugins need to be updated from your WordPress Notification Toolbar (as shown below, a number of plugins require updating) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you which plugins 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 the plugin individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by learning how to upgrade one WordPress plugin at a time.
Upgrading Single Plugins
Always make a backup of your data and files before making any upgrades to your blog or website.
In your main menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
You will be taken to the “Plugins” page. The table of plugins can run down your page for a while, depending on how many plugins you have added to your site …
(Plugins Section)
Notes:
If you have too many plugins installed and would like to reduce the number of plugins displaying on the page, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins page and type in a smaller number of items per page (by default, all plugins display on the screen), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
Your Plugins section 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 “Plugin Search” box …
You will see information about plugins in different backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (active vs. inactive and out-of-date vs up-to-date) …
Plugins that require upgrading have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin Name] available” …
Find the plugin that you want to update and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides smooth & simple plugin updates, so that the process of updating your plugins takes place “behind the scenes” 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 several plugins that are out-of-date and would like to upgrade them all at the same time.
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Now that you know how to upgrade plugins one at a time, the next step is to learn how to bulk-upgrade plugins.
Bulk-Upgrading Plugins
To update multiple WP plugins in a single operation 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 their individual boxes …
In the Bulk Actions dropdown menu above the table of plugins, select Update …
And then click Apply …
Your selected plugins will all be updated at once …
Once all plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to the Plugins section, or choose another option from the WP admin menu …
Once your plugins are all up-to-date, the plugin notifications 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 updated!
(When your plugins are up-to-date, the notification icons no longer appear)
Now that you know how to upgrade your in your dashboard, let’s show you how to delete plugins safely from your WordPress site.
How To Delete WordPress Plugins
As part of smart WordPress management, it’s a good idea to uninstall inactive plugins. This helps to conserve server resources and will help you avoid problems.
In this section, you will learn how to safely deactivate and delete 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 delete a plugin, go to your dashboard menu and choose Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins section, locate the plugin you want to delete 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 continuing with your plugin deletion …
Next, click Delete …
If you want to review a list of all the files that will be deleted before proceeding, 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 go ahead and delete the plugin files, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugins and related files will be deleted …
Deleting Multiple WordPress Plugins At Once
You can delete all inactive plugins at once, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be uninstalled.
Note: To delete any plugins that are currently active, you must first 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) …
Once you have done this, 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” screen and click on the Inactive link in the Plugins menu …
Click on the checkbox in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to remove by checking their individual boxes …
Once you have selected all of the plugins that you want deleted, specify Delete from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …
Click the Apply button …
A list of all selected plugins will show up 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 delete all of the plugins listed …
Your plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
Management Tools For Plugins
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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