How to Reinstall a Plugin in WordPress Tutorial (Step by Step)
How to Reinstall a Plugin in WordPress (Step by Step). One of the great features of WordPress are the extendable plugins. The issue with plugins are updates or conflicts with other plugins that can lead to plugin update crashing your site due to an invalid/incompatible code. The best way is to reinstall the plugin.
What is WordPress
WordPress is an open source content management system that is free to use and modify. It is one of the simplest as well as popular easy to create your own website or blog.
Majority of the websites on the internet were created using WordPress. That is over 40% of the websites on the internet were built using this content management system (CMS).
The main feature for its popularity is its ease of use. You can set up your site in a very short time. It also makes it easy for site administrators to add and configure features, usually with the help of a vast array of plugins they can choose from.
With WordPress there comes a security. WordPress security plugins you can make your website even more secure.
Follow this post to learn how to reinstall a plugin in WordPress.
What is a WordPress plugin
A WordPress plugin is a piece of code that has been written by a third party developer and is used to add features to a website using this CMS.
WordPress provides basic infrastructure but is lacking in advanced features that serve to enhance the user experience (UX) or provide complex services. At present, there are almost 60,000 plugins available for any WordPress website owner to use for free, for example we have our own WordPress Single Sign On plugin that allows you to use any IDP like Office 365 to authenticate your WordPress users..
The plugins are written in PHP and integrate seamlessly with the WordPress framework, and enhance the features of a website, without affecting its performance.
Why would you need to reinstall a plugin
Here are some reasons why you may need to reinstall a plugin:
- WordPress keeps crashing – right after installing a new plugin, you find that your whole website has crashed.
- To reset all settings and start from scratch – a misconfiguration has caused the website to slow down or even crash.
- Issues due to updates – an update to a plugin has caused the website to slow down or crash.
- Conflicts with other plugins – other plugins crash or perform oddly due to the configuration or installation of a plugin.
- Clearing the cache – some plugins are notorious for storing huge caches that could bloat the site’s databases and cause it to slow down; a reinstall can clear the data and help improve the site’s performance.
- The trial period has expired – some plugins offer trial periods after which you won’t be able to use them or, perhaps, the full version is something you want to install and need to get rid of the trial version first.
- Unhappy with a plugin – in some cases you may need to reinstall a plugin to make sure that it is indeed the product you are looking for. You may want to retry it using new configurations and settings.
How to reinstall a plugin in WordPress
Ok, let’s jump right in and see how to Reinstall a Plugin in WordPress (Step by Step). But, before we do so, it should be noted that we randomly chose the plugin we are going to use in this post.
1. Make sure you have the right authority
Before you even begin trying to reinstall a WordPress plugin, you need to make sure you have the appropriate role to do so.
If you are the owner of the website, then you probably already have all administrative rights. Other users, on the other hand, need to have permission granted to them as only the “Administrator” role can work with plugins.
2. Backup your website
It is always advisable to make a backup of the whole website before making changes to plugins. Before you go and uninstall a plugin, it is well advised to take a backup and store it somewhere else – preferably offline. This way, if something goes wrong, you can immediately restore the website and return to the status quo.
3. Uninstall
Before we can reinstall a plugin, we will need to first deactivate it and then uninstall it from the control panel. Here’s how:
4. Deactivate
To deactivate a plugin, head to the plugins’ menu and list all your plugins.
Next, select the plugin you want to deactivate. Then, head up to the “Bulk Action” dropdown menu and select “Deactivate” before clicking on “Apply.”
Alternatively, you can also deactivate a plugin by clicking on the “Deactivate” link below the plugin.
5. Uninstall
Once deactivated, a plugin can now be safely uninstalled. As soon as it has been deactivated, the options change to “Activate” and “Delete.”
Clicking on the “Delete” link does the job.
Alternatively, you can select the plugin, go up to the “Bulk Action” dropdown menu, select the “Delete” option, and click on “Apply.”
6. Uninstall (using file manager)
A rather crude way of uninstalling a plugin involves deleting it from the WordPress file manager. To do this, you head to the “plugins” folder – located in the “wp-content” folder – and find the plugin’s folder… and “Remove” or delete it.
Note: using this uninstallation method should be avoided because the plugin will be uninstalled without any cleanup being done in WordPress. This could result in rogue code being left behind which could cause errors at a later stage. Use this method only when you have no access to the dashboard.
7. Reinstall
Ok; now that we have uninstalled the plugin safely, we can go ahead and reinstall it. The steps are:
A): Search for the plugin
Click on the “Add New” button at the top of the Plugins page. This will take you to the WordPress Plugin Directory page.
Typing in the name – or even just a part of the name – of a plugin or its function (backup, SEO, etc.) will return a selection of plugins for you to choose from.
B): Install
Once located, you can click on the “Install” button and wait for it to complete doing so.
After installation is complete, the button will change to “Activate” for you to click on again.
As soon as it completes the activation, the plugin appears under the plugin menu for further configurations and use.
C): Upload the plugin
Sometimes, you may need to install the plugins by manually uploading them to WordPress. To do that, all you have to do is click on the “Upload Plugin” button on the WordPress Plugins Directory page.
This will open a new section at the top of the page where you can now search, choose, and upload the plugin from a local directory.
Note: you can manually download the plugin from the creators’ site or even WordPress.org. Search for it using your favorite engine and download the .zip file.
Warning: although plugin authors offer their products on their sites, it is always a good idea to install them directly from the WordPress Plugins Directory. Nulled plugins – those that have been cracked and/or injected with malicious code – can do a lot of harm your website, your network and even your business and its reputation.
Once the .zip file has been uploaded and installed you will see your plugin under the plugins menu.
Bulk Delete Plugins
Here’s a quick tip: in case more than one plugin needs reinstalling you can go ahead and select them all – by checking the “Plugin” radio button at the top of the plugin names’ column – before deactivating and uninstalling them using the “Apply” button for bulk actions.
Care needs to be taken here that the right plugins have been selected for uninstalling, and that they won’t affect the website when they are removed, as it would make it difficult to figure out which plugin’s removal caused the error.
Great job! You have learned to Reinstall a Plugin in WordPress.
How to Reinstall a Plugin in WordPress (Step by Step) Conclusion
WordPress is the most popular way to build a website for a blog to an eCommerce store. WordPress’ popularity is continuing to increase and we can safely assume that even more businesses will continue to adopt this CMS.
Your business too can be a part of this ever increasing number of businesses and run WordPress on Windows servers. If your preffered option is to go the cloud then choose an Azure WordPress site for an even more optimized online presence.
Whatever your installation preferences are, we can help you achieve a great digital presence using this amazing CMS, so contact us to find out more.
