In another blog post, we explain what plugins are and how you can use plugins to easily expand your website’s capabilities.
You can read this article here:
In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn the importance of keeping your WordPress plugins up-to-date, how to automatically upgrade and remove your WordPress plugins, and discover useful tools to help you better manage your plugins if you plan to own or manage multiple WordPress sites.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Many Plugins Need Updating
New WordPress versions are regularly released (about every 3-4 months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in older releases, and to improve existing features.
Depending on how many plugins you use on your site, there will typically be new updates for plugins each time a new version of WordPress is made available.
The reason for this, is because most plugins for WordPress are created by third-party developers, so sometimes the code in the newly-released WordPress version conflicts with plugins that were developed and tested with a previous version. Whenever this happens, problems can sometimes occur.
Fortunately, most WordPress plugin developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are very proactive when it comes to ensuring 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 simply maintain your plugins up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is very simple, quick and easy to do.
Keeping your WordPress plugins up-to-date and deleting old plugins you no longer need is part of good WordPress management and helps to avoid potential errors and conflicts.
The WordPress tutorial below explains how to upgrade and delete plugins without web coding knowledge needed.
Upgrading And Deleting Plugins – Tutorial
WordPress utilizes several ways to alert you when plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can immediately see how many plugins are out-of-date from your Administration site by looking at the “Plugins” menu.
In the screenshot below, nine WP plugins are out of date and need updating …
You can also view how many plugins need updating from your WordPress Notification Toolbar (the screenshot below shows that a number of plugins should be updated) …
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 pages and gives you the option to update your plugin with one-click …
Let’s start by showing you how to update one plugin at a time.
Upgrading WordPress Plugins One At A Time
We strongly recommend making a full backup of your data and files before upgrading your website or blog.
In your main menu, select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
You will be taken to the “Plugins” section. The list of plugins can go down your screen for a while, depending on the number of plugins you have installed in your site …
(WordPress Plugins Screen)
Additional Info:
If you have too many plugins and would like to reduce the number of plugins showing 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 (all plugins show on the page by default, i.e. “999”), then click Apply …
Your Plugins section 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 “Plugin Search” feature …
WordPress displays information about plugins in different color 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 [Insert Plugin Name] available” …
Select the plugin that needs updating 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 updating your plugins takes place with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins screen …
Repeat the above process for all plugins on your site that need updating, or see the section below if you have a number of 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, let’s show you how to update multiple plugins simultaneously.
How To Bulk-Update WordPress Plugins
To update multiple plugins simultaneously using the automatic upgrading 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 only the plugins you want to update by checking its box …
In the Bulk Actions pull-down menu above your plugin table, select Update …
Click Apply …
Your selected plugins will begin updating …
After all updates have completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to your Plugins area, or choose another option from the dashboard menu …
Once all plugins are up-to-date, any plugin alerts 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) …
You have updated all plugins on your site to their latest version!
(When plugins on your site are up-to-date, the notification icons disappear)
Now that you know how to upgrade your plugins, let’s take a look at how to safely uninstall plugins from your WordPress site or blog.
How To Delete Plugins
At times, you may decide to delete WordPress plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This conserves server resources and also help to eliminate causes of problems.
In this section, you will learn how to safely delete unused plugins from your WordPress site.
Always create 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 remove a plugin, go to your admin menu and click on Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins page, locate 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 continuing …
Click Delete …
If you want to have a look at all the files that will be deleted before taking the next step, then click on the “Click to view entire list of files which will be deleted” link in the “Delete Plugin” page …
The entire list of files associated with the plugin that you are about to remove will display on your screen …
If you are absolutely sure that you want to go ahead and delete these plugin, click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugin(s) will be deleted from your server …
How To Safely Bulk-Delete WP 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 check box, or selecting the check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …
Next, specify Deactivate from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …
Click Apply …
Your selected plugins will be deactivated …
To delete all or some of the inactive plugins on your site, go to the “Plugins” section and click on the Inactive link in the Plugins menu …
Select all of the plugins you want to delete by either placing a tick next to their checkbox, or click on the checkbox next to the Plugin column header to select and delete all inactive plugins …
Once you have ticked all the check boxes next to the plugins that you want to delete, specify Delete from the Bulk Actions pull-down menu …
Click Apply …
A list of all selected plugins will display 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 would like to go ahead and delete all of the selected plugins …
The selected plugins will be deleted …
Managing Plugins
As well as the methods shown above, you can install WordPress plugins to 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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"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com