In another article, we provide an overview of what WordPress plugins are all about and how you can use these to easily increase your website’s capabilities.
To read the article, go here:
In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping all WordPress plugins up-to-date, how to automatically upgrade and delete your WordPress plugins, and useful tips to help you better manage your plugins.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Some Of Your Plugins Need To Be Updated
The WordPress software is constantly updated (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in earlier software releases, as well as to improve existing features.
Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, there will typically be new new update notifications for WordPress plugins each time a new version of WordPress is announced.
This is because most WordPress plugins are created by 3rd-party developers, so sometimes code in the newly-released WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were created and tested to work with 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 fairly proactive when it comes to making sure that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if required). All you have to do as a WordPress user, is just keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon learn, is very simple, quick and easy to do.
Keeping your WordPress plugins regularly updated and deleting old plugins you no longer need is an essential aspect of good WordPress management and helps to avoid any conflicts and errors.
The tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins in your WordPress admin dashboard without coding knowledge needed.
Updating And Deleting WordPress Plugins Safely – Tutorial
WordPress employs several ways to notify users when plugins need updating.
For example, you can immediately see how many plugins are out-of-date as soon as you log into your Administration site by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
In the screenshot below, you can see that 9 plugins have older versions that need updating …
You can also view how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Toolbar (in the screenshot below, you can see how many plugins require updating) …
The Plugins page (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also lets you know which plugins need updating …
As well as providing information about plugins that have updates available, the Plugins screen provides links to the plugin developer sites and gives you the option to update the plugins with one-click …
Let’s start by showing you how to upgrade individual WP plugins.
Upgrade Plugins Individually
We strongly recommend performing a complete backup of your website before upgrading your website.
In your dashboard menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
The “Plugins” section will display in your browser. The list of plugins can go down your screen for a while, depending on the number of plugins you have added to your blog …
(The WordPress Plugins Screen)
Useful Information:
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 screen and type in a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show up on the screen by default, i.e. “999”), then click Apply …
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 Installed Plugins” field …
WordPress displays plugin information in different color backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (active vs. inactive and up-to-date vs. out-of-date) …
Plugins in need of upgrading have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] available” …
Select the plugin that needs to be updated and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides simpler plugin updates, so that updating your plugins takes place with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins screen …
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 all plugins at the same time.
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Now that you know how to update individual plugins, it’s time to learn how to bulk-upgrade plugins.
Bulk-Updating Plugins
To upgrade multiple WP plugins in one go from your admin area, go to the “Plugins” area 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 update by checking their individual boxes …
In the Bulk Actions pull-down menu above your plugin list, choose Update …
Click Apply …
Your selected plugins will begin the update process …
Once your plugins have been updated, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to your Plugins area, or select another option from the sidebar menu …
Once all plugins are 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) …
You have updated all plugins on your site to their latest version!
(When your site or blog uses the latest version of all plugins, update notices no longer appear)
Now that you know how to upgrade WordPress plugins, it’s time to learn how to remove plugins safely from your WordPress blog or website.
How To Remove Plugins
At times, you may choose to delete plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This helps to decrease server resources and also helps to eliminate causes of problems.
In this section, you will learn how to deactivate and delete unused plugins from your WordPress site or blog.
We strongly recommend creating 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 main menu and click on Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins screen, find the plugin you want to delete and make sure it is deactivated.
Hint: Inactive plugins are listed in a different colored background than active plugins and show an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, then click on Deactivate before proceeding with your plugin deletion …
Next, click on Delete …
If you would like to review a list of 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 …
A complete list of files associated with the plugin that you are about to delete will be listed on your screen …
If you are positively sure that you want to proceed and delete the selected plugin, then click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugins and related files will be removed from your WordPress installation …
How To Delete Multiple WordPress Plugins At Once
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 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 checkbox, or selecting the check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …
Once you have done this, select Deactivate from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …
Click the Apply button …
Your selected plugins will be deactivated …
Once you have deactivated your plugins, click on the Inactive link on the menu at the top of the page …
Select all of the plugins you want to delete by either placing a tick next to their checkbox, or click on the check box next to the Plugin column header to select and delete all inactive plugins …
Once you have selected all of 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 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 sure that you want to go ahead and remove all of the plugins listed …
Your plugins will be deleted …
Useful WordPress Tools For Managing Plugins
In addition to the methods shown above, you can use other WordPress plugins 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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