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In this step by step guide, we will prove you how to update WordPress plugins, and how to manage WP plugin updates more efficiently.

After you start your blog and install plugins, it's exceedingly important for security reasons that you keep the plugins updated.

Why We Update Our WordPress Plugins?

WordPress plugins are similar apps for your WordPress website.

You can install them to add new features and functionality to your website like adding contact forms, picture galleries, sliders, etc.

You can find out more about WordPress plugins in our guide what are WordPress plugins?

How exactly do they work?.

Plugins are created by third-party developers.

Most of them keep improving their plugins by adding new features, improving code quality, and holding them secure.

These changes are then published as updates.

You should always maintain your WordPress site plugins up to date to ensure that those changes are applied to your site immediately.

This improves WordPress security and performance of your site.

Having said that, let's find out how to update WordPress plugins.

WordPress comes with a built-in plugins update system.

It automatically checks for WordPress updates and shows you notifications when there are updates available for your WordPress plugins, themes, and WordPress core software.

You can manually checks for plugin updates by just visiting Dashboard » Updates page.

When there is a new update available for plugins, you will understand the notification on the plugins menu in the WordPress admin bar.

You can set up these updates by visiting the Plugins page.

You will see a notice below each plugin that has updates available for you to install.

You can simply click on the 'Update Now' link to install each update.

Update WordPress Plugins:

If there are updates for several WordPress plugins for your website, and so you may want to quickly review and bulk update those plugins.

To do that, you just need to visit the WP Plugins page and click on the 'Update Available' link.

This will depict you the list of all plugins that have updates available.

You can pick out all of them and then select 'Update' from the 'Bulk Actions' drop down menu.

Before You, Update Plugins Must Read this!

Before you update the plugin, it's important that you click on the View version details link to understand what changes the plugin author has made.

This will keep you informed as to what changes were prepared should anything not work properly.

Unless the version details specifically say security update, we usually wait one full week before updating the plugin.

At this time, all errors usually get caught, reported, and geared up.

If you bear a heavy traffic site that is generating a lot of leads, then we recommend you to do the same.

How to Undo Plugin Update

Sometimes a plugin update can produce unexpected results like some plugin features may not function properly.

In that case, the very first thing, you will need to deactivate that specific plugin.

If you can access the Plugins page in the WordPress admin area, then just simply click on the 'Deactivate Plugin' link below the misbehaving plugin.

After all that, you can set up the WP-Rollback WordPress plugin.

For more details, see our step by step guide on how to set up a WordPress plugin. 

After activation, the plugin, go back to the Plugins page, and you will be able to experience a rollback option below each plugin.

Clicking on it will let you to rollback the plugin to any previous version.

If you are unable to access the WordPress admin area, then adopt the steps in our guide on how to deactivate all the WordPress plugins when not able to access WordPress admin area.

Tips To Manage WordPress Plugins

If you manage multiple WordPress sites, then you will soon understand that you have to update plugins quite often.

Here are some tips to help you do them more efficiently.

If you are positive about the plugins that you are using, then you can enable automatic updates for all your WordPress plugins.

However, a better approach will be to setup automatic updates just for select few plugins that you trust.

Follow the above instructions in our guide on how to better manage the WordPress updates.

If you don't manage multiple WordPress sites, then you can setup email notifications for plugin updates.

This will leave you to be alerted when there is an update available without logging into your WordPress Blog/Website.

Always make sure that you have set up an automatic backup plugin on your WordPress website.

This will allow you to restore your WordPress site in case something gets wrong.

Last but not least, if you can afford managed WordPress hosting, then the staging website feature is decidedly worth the investment.

It allows you to try out the new plugin updates on a staging environment before going live.

We recommend using either WPEngine or SiteGround's Go Geeks plan.

We hope this article helped you to learn how to completely update WordPress plugins.

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Source: (Step by Step) How To Update WordPress Plugins