In another post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use plugins to enhance your web site’s functionality.
You can view this article here:
In this tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping your plugins up-to-date, how to automatically upgrade and delete plugins from your site, and discover useful plugin management tips if you need to run or manage multiple WordPress sites or blogs.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Many Of Your WordPress Plugins Need To Be Regularly Upgraded
New WordPress versions are regularly released (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in previous releases, and to improve existing features or introduce new ones.
Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, there will typically be new new update notifications for plugins when new WordPress versions are announced.
This is because most WordPress plugins are created by external developers, so sometimes features in the newly-released WordPress version conflict with plugins that were created and tested to work with a previous version. Whenever this happens, there is a potential for conflicts to sometimes develop.
Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are quite proactive when it comes to ensuring that plugins get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if updating is needed). All you have to do on your end, is just keep your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is really 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 site management and helps to avoid potential errors or problems.
The WordPress tutorial below explains how to automatically upgrade and delete WordPress plugins without requiring web programming knowledge.
How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete Plugins – Tutorial
WordPress employs a number of different methods to let users know when plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can tell immediately how many plugins are out-of-date from your Administration area simply by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
For example, in the screenshot below, nine WordPress plugins are out of date and need to be updated …
You can also check how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Admin Toolbar (as shown below, several plugins should be brought up to date) …
The Plugins page (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you how many plugins need to be updated …
In addition to 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 with one-click …
Let’s start by showing you how to update individual plugins.
Upgrading Plugins One At A Time
We strongly recommend performing a complete backup of your website before updating your blog or website.
From your main menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
You will be taken to the “Plugins” area. This screen can be quite lengthy depending on the number of plugins you have installed in your blog …
(Plugins Screen)
Additional Information:
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 enter a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show up on the page by default), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
Your Plugins area 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 “Plugin Search” feature …
WordPress displays information about plugins in different backgrounds depending on the status of the plugins (active vs. inactive and up-to-date vs. outdated) …
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 has done away with the loading screen when updating plugins and streamlined the process, 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 updating, or refer to the section below if you have many plugins that are out-of-date and would like to update all plugins at the same time.
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Now that you know how to upgrade individual plugins, it’s time to learn how to upgrade a bunch of WP plugins simultaneously.
Bulk-Upgrading Plugins
To upgrade multiple plugins at the same time directly inside your dashboard, go to the “Plugins” page and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Click the checkbox in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select only the plugins you want to upgrade by checking its box …
In the Bulk Actions drop-down menu above the table of plugins, choose Update …
Click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will begin updating …
Once the update process has completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to your Plugins screen, or go to a different section of your dashboard …
Once your plugins are all up-to-date, the update reminders disappear (i.e. the “at-a-glance” indicators and “There is a new version of XYZ plugin available” messages no longer display on your screen, toolbar and menus) …
All plugins have now been updated to their latest versions!
(When your plugins are up-to-date, notification icons no longer show)
Now that you know how to automatically upgrade your plugins, it’s time to learn how to delete plugins safely from your WordPress blog or website.
How To Safely Delete Plugins
It’s a good idea to delete inactive plugins. This helps to conserve resource usage and eliminates potential problems.
In this section, you will learn how to delete unused plugins from your 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 restore your site.
To remove a plugin, go to your WP admin menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins area, find the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is deactivated.
Hint: Inactive plugins have a different colored background 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 …
Next, click Delete …
If you want 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 belonging to the plugin that you are about to remove will display on your screen …
If you are positively sure that you want to go ahead and delete the selected plugin, click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugins and related files will be removed from your WordPress installation …
Bulk-Deleting WordPress Plugins
You can delete all inactive plugins at once, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be removed.
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 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 dropdown menu …
Click the Apply button …
The 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 in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to remove by checking their individual boxes …
Once you have ticked all the check boxes next to the plugins that you want deleted, 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 want to go ahead and delete all of the plugins listed …
Your plugins will be deleted …
WordPress Management Tools For WP Plugins
As well as the methods shown above, you can install Free and Premium WordPress plugins to 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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