In another article, we provide an overview of what plugins are all about and how you can use plugins to easily increase your web site’s capabilities.
You can view this article here:
In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping all plugins up-to-date, how to easily upgrade and delete your WordPress plugins, and discover practical plugin management tips if you need to own or manage multiple WordPress sites.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Some Of Your WordPress Plugins Need To Be Regularly Upgraded
WordPress constantly updates its software (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in earlier software releases, and to improve existing features.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, there will typically be new updates for plugins every.
This is because most WordPress plugins are created by third-party developers, so sometimes code in the new WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were developed for a previous version. When this happens, there is a potential for conflicts 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 updating is required). All you need to do as a WordPress user, is simply maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is very simple, quick and easy to do.
Keeping your plugins regularly updated and deleting old plugins you no longer need is part of good WordPress management and helps to avoid errors and conflicts.
The tutorial below explains how to upgrade and delete plugins from the dashboard without touching web code.
Updating And Deleting WordPress Plugins – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress utilizes a number of different methods to let users know when plugins need updating.
For example, you can immediately see how many plugins need updating as soon as you log into your Administration panel just by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that nine WP plugins are out of date and need updating …
You can also tell how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Admin Toolbar (as shown below, a number of plugins require updating) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you how many plugins need to be updated …
As well as providing information about which plugins have available updates, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin developer sites and gives you the option to update your plugins individually or in bulk …
Let’s start by learning how to upgrade individual WordPress plugins.
Upgrading Individual WordPress Plugins
Always make a complete backup of your data and files before making any upgrades to your website.
From your WP admin menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” section will display in your browser. The page can be quite long depending on the number of plugins you have added to your blog …
(WordPress Plugins Page)
Useful 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 area and enter a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show up on the screen by default), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
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 “Search Installed Plugins” function …
You will see information about plugins in different backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (inactive vs. active and out-of-date vs up-to-date) …
Plugins that need updating have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] available” …
Locate 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 the above process for all plugins on your site that need updating, or refer to the section below if you have a number of plugins that are out-of-date and would like to upgrade all plugins at once.
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Now that you know how to update WP plugins one at a time, it’s time to learn how to bulk-upgrade plugins.
How To Bulk-Upgrade WP Plugins
To update multiple WordPress plugins in a single operation 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 in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to update by checking its box …
In the Bulk Actions pull-down menu above the list of plugins, choose Update …
And then click Apply …
Your selected plugins will begin to update automatically …
After your plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to the Plugins section, or select a different section of your dashboard …
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” messages no longer display) …
You have updated all plugins on your site!
(When your site uses the latest version of all plugins, the notification icons do not display)
Now that you know how to update your plugins, it’s time to learn how to safely delete plugins from your WordPress blog or website.
How To Safely Remove WordPress Plugins
It’s a good idea to remove inactive plugins. This helps to conserve server resources and eliminate potential problems.
In this section, you will learn how to deactivate and delete 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 choose Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins section, find the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is inactive.
Hint: Inactive plugins have a different background color than active plugins and display an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, click on Deactivate before going any further …
Next, click on Delete …
If you would like to browse 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” screen …
A complete list of files associated with the plugin that you are about to delete will be listed on your screen …
If you are absolutely certain that you would like to proceed and delete the plugin files, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugin(s) will be removed from your server …
Bulk-Deleting Plugins
You can delete all inactive plugins at once, 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 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 the Apply button …
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 …
Tick the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to remove by checking its box …
Once you have selected all of the plugins that you want to delete, select 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 sure that you would like to go ahead and delete all of the selected plugins …
All plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
Useful Tools For Managing WP Plugins
In addition to the methods shown above, you can install WordPress plugins that help you 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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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum