In another article, we explain what plugins are and how you can use these to expand your web site’s functionality.
To view this article, go here:
In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping your plugins up-to-date, how to automatically update and uninstall your WordPress plugins, and discover some tools to help you better manage your plugins if you currently run multiple WordPress sites or blogs.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Your Plugins Need To Be Frequently Upgraded
New versions of WordPress are regularly released (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in previous releases, and to improve existing features.
Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, you can expect to see at least some new new update notifications for WordPress plugins each time a new WordPress version is announced.
The reason for this, is because most WordPress plugins are created by 3rd-party developers, so sometimes the code in the newly-released WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were developed for a previous version. Whenever this happens, issues can 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 website owner, is simply maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is really simple, quick and easy to do.
Keeping your plugins regularly updated and removing old plugins you no longer need is part of good WordPress management and helps to avoid any errors and problems.
The tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins from the dashboard without touching web code.
Upgrading And Deleting Plugins From Your WP Admin Dashboard – Tutorial
WordPress uses a few ways to inform users when plugins need updating.
For example, you can see ‘at a glance’ how many plugins need updating as soon as you log into your Admin area just by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
In the screenshot below, you can see that nine plugins are out of date and need to be updated …
You can also view how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Admin Toolbar (as shown below, several plugins have to be updated) …
The Plugins screen (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you what plugins need to be updated …
As well as providing information about plugins that have available updates, the Plugins page provides links to the plugin download pages and gives you the option to update the plugin with one-click …
Let’s start by showing you how to upgrade one WordPress plugin at a time.
Updating WordPress Plugins One At A Time
We strongly recommend making a backup of your site files and database before making any updates to your blog or website.
In your dashboard menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
You will be taken to the “Plugins” area. The page can be quite lengthy depending on how many plugins you have installed in your site …
(The WordPress Plugins Section)
Useful Info:
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 screen and type in a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show up on the page by default, i.e. “999”), then click Apply …
Your Plugins page will now be reduced in size with a pagination feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search” function …
WordPress displays plugin information in different 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 [Insert Plugin Name] available” …
Locate the plugin that needs to be updated and click on the update now link …
WordPress provides smooth & simple plugin updates, so that updating your plugins takes place with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins screen …
Repeat this process for all plugins on your site that need to be updated, or refer to the section below if you have a number of plugins that are out-of-date and would like to update them all at once.
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Now that you know how to update one plugin at a time, let’s show you how to bulk-upgrade plugins.
How To Update Multiple Plugins
To update multiple plugins in one go using the automatic updating feature, go to the “Plugins” screen and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Click on the check box next to 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 dropdown menu above the plugin table, choose Update …
And then click Apply …
Your selected plugins will begin updating …
Once all updates have been completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to the Plugins area, or go to a different 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” messages no longer display) …
All plugins have now been updated!
(When your plugins are all up-to-date, the notification icons do not display)
Now that you know how to update plugins, let’s show you how to safely delete plugins from your blog or website.
Deleting WordPress Plugins
Occasionally, you may want to remove WP plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This helps to decrease server resources and eliminate potential problems.
In this section, you will learn how to safely deactivate and delete unused plugins from your WordPress site or blog.
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 remove a plugin, go to your main menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins screen, 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 show 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 going ahead with 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 belonging to the plugin selected for removalwill be listed on your screen …
If you are sure that you would like to go ahead and delete the plugin files, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugin(s) will be deleted …
How To Safely Bulk-Delete Plugins
You can delete all inactive plugins at once, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be cleared.
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 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 pull-down menu …
Click the Apply button …
Your 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 on the main menu …
Tick the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to delete by checking their individual boxes …
Once you have selected all of the plugins that you want to delete, 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 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 absolutely certain that you want to proceed to the next step and delete all of the selected plugins …
Your plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
Managing WP Plugins
In addition to the methods shown above, you can install a range of tools to manage your plugins.
PLUGIN CENTRAL
Plugin Central is a Free WordPress plugin that helps you manage your plugins with options that let you install plugins directly, displays the status of plugins in need of update on your Admin area and also allows you to update multiple plugins with a single click …
To learn more about this plugin, go here:
Managing WordPress Plugins On Multiple Sites
As discussed earlier, when plugin developers release a new plugin update, the best practice is to upgrde that plugin as soon as possible.
What if you run multiple sites using the same plugin? One option, is to login to your sites one by one and then go through the plugin update process from that site’s dashboard. If you have to update plugins on multiple sites, this process can take quite a while!
WordPress Power User Tip: If you manage multiple WordPress sites, you can install, update and remove plugins on all of your sites automatically and simultaneously using various WordPress management tools.
Here are a couple of WordPress management tools that are worth knowing about:
Jetpack Manage
The Jetpack plugin is a multifunctional WordPress plugin that offers users a wide range of added functionality, allowing self-hosted WordPress site owners to access WordPress.com’s infrastructure and take advantage of things like robust stats, easy social sharing, and so much more.
(Jetpack lets you access a range of powerful WordPress.com features)
One of these features is “Manage”.
Jetpack Manage allows you to manage multiple WordPress sites and plugins from a single interface.
With Manage, you can upgrade plugins, set plugins to automatically update, and activate or deactivate plugins on a per-site basis or all at once, whether you’re on your computer, tablet, or smart device.
To learn more about using the plugin, go here:
ManageWP
(ManageWP is a very popular WordPress management tool for multiple WP sites)
ManageWP helps you easily manage all of your sites from one dashboard, including upgrades, backups, security and more. The tool features easy and intuitive one-click management and instant login to all of your sites.
To download the plugin, visit this site:
WP Pipeline
(With WP Pipeline, you can update all of your WordPress sites, plugins and themes from a single location)
WP Pipeline is very similar to ManageWP, but sells for a one-time license fee instead of recurring payments. It lets you manage your entire portfolio of WordPress sites and perform multiple upgrades from one single WP installation.
For more information about the plugin, visit this site:
Congratulations! Now you know how to automatically upgrade and remove your plugins in WordPress using the dashboard.
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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