In another article, we provide an overview of what plugins are all about and how you can use plugins to easily extend your blog’s capabilities.
To view this article, go here:
In this step-by-step tutorial you will learn why plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to safely upgrade and uninstall your WordPress plugins, and useful plugin management tools if you need to own or manage multiple WordPress sites or blogs.
How To Update And Delete WordPress Plugins
Why Some WordPress Plugins Need Updating
WordPress regularly updates its software (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities found in older versions, 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 plugins each time a new version of WordPress is released.
This is because most WordPress plugins are created by 3rd-party developers, so sometimes the code in the newly-released WordPress version conflict with plugins that were developed for a previous version. When this happens, there is a potential for problems to sometimes develop.
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 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 plugins up-to-date and removing old plugins you no longer use is an essential aspect of good WordPress management and helps to avoid potential problems and errors.
The step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins safely without coding skills necessary.
Updating And Deleting WordPress Plugins In The WordPress Admin Dashboard – Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress utilizes several methods to let users know when plugins need to be updated.
For example, you can tell immediately how many plugins need to be updated as soon as you log into your Admin area just by looking at the main “Plugins” menu.
In the screenshot below, you can see that 9 plugins have older versions that need to be updated …
You can also tell how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Admin Toolbar (in the example below, you can see how many plugins require updating) …
The Plugins section (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also tells you what plugins need to be updated …
In addition to providing information about which plugins have available updates, the Plugins page provides links to the plugin download sites and gives you the option to update your plugins with one-click …
Let’s start by learning how to update plugins individually.
How To Upgrade Plugins Individually
We recommend performing a backup of your website before updating your blog or website.
In your dashboard menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
You will be taken to the “Plugins” area. This list of plugins can be quite long depending on how many plugins you have added to your blog …
(WordPress Plugins Page)
Useful Info:
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, i.e. “999”), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
Your Plugins area will now be made more manageable with a page scrolling feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search” feature …
You will see plugin information in different backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (inactive vs. active and out-of-date vs up-to-date) …
Plugins that require updating have a distinctive notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] available” …
Locate the plugin that you want to update and click on the update now link …
WordPress has done away with the loading screen when updating plugins and streamlined the process, so that updating your plugins happens “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins screen …
Repeat the above process for all plugins on your site that need to be updated, or see the section below if you have many plugins that are out-of-date and would like to upgrade them all in bulk.
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Now that you know how to upgrade plugins one at a time, it’s time to learn how to update several plugins simultaneously.
How To Update Several Plugins
To upgrade multiple WordPress plugins at the same time 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 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 dropdown menu at the top of the page, choose Update …
And then click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will automatically begin to update …
After the update process has completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to return to your Plugins area, or select another section of your dashboard …
Once all plugins are up-to-date, the plugin notifications 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 upgraded!
(When plugins on your site are all up-to-date, notification icons no longer show)
Now that you know how to upgrade WordPress plugins, it’s time to learn how to safely remove plugins from your WordPress blog or website.
How To Safely Remove Plugins
At times, you may decide to delete plugins that you no longer need or are no longer using on your site. This can help decrease server resources and also eliminates problems.
In this section, we show you how to safely uninstall unused plugins from your site.
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 WP admin menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins area, find the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is inactive.
Hint: Inactive plugins use 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 proceeding with your plugin deletion …
Next, click on Delete …
If you want to review a list of 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” section …
All files associated with the plugin that you are about to delete will be listed on your screen …
If you are positively sure that you would like to proceed and delete the plugin, click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
Your plugins and related files will be removed from your server …
How To Safely Delete Several Plugins At Once
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 currently 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 check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …
Next, choose Deactivate from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …
Click Apply …
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 …
Click on 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 ticked all the check boxes next to the plugins that you want to delete, choose Delete from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu …
Click Apply …
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 sure that you want to proceed to the next step and delete all of the selected plugins …
All plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
Managing WordPress Plugins
As well as the methods shown above, you can install 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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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now