Manage plugins and themes

The Plugins and Themes groups on a hosting’s WordPress tab run wp-cli on the node that owns the hosting, as the hosting’s system user, on the PHP version the hosting’s site runs. When the hosting has no PHP pool yet, or its PHP version has no command-line binary on the node, wp-cli uses the node’s default PHP. Every action is written to the audit log.

Before you start

• WordPress is installed on the hosting. See Install WordPress on a hosting.
• The hosting is active. A suspended hosting refuses plugin and theme actions with “hosting must be active to manage plugins”.
• You hold the Manage WordPress (plugins, staging, …) permission for the hosting.

Steps

Install a plugin from wordpress.org or a URL

1. Open Hostings in the sidebar, click the hosting, then open the WordPress tab.
2. In the Plugins group header, click + Install plugin.
3. In Source, enter a wordpress.org slug such as akismet, or a full https:// URL to a plugin ZIP. URLs may use http:// or https://, contain only letters, digits and _ - . / % ~ = & ? + :, and be at most 512 characters after the scheme.
4. Click Install & activate. The plugin is installed and activated in one step. If it installs but fails while activating, the message says “the plugin installed but FAILED TO ACTIVATE” and shows the wp-cli output.

Install a theme

1. In the Themes group header, click + Install theme.
2. Enter a wordpress.org slug such as astra, or a ZIP URL, in Source.
3. Click Install & activate. The theme becomes the active theme.

Install from the library

If the WordPress asset library holds uploaded ZIPs, a From library button appears in both group headers.

1. Click From library.
2. Choose a ZIP in Uploaded ZIP (plugins are listed as [plugin], themes as [theme]). The theme popover lists themes only.
3. Leave Activate after install ticked to activate it, or untick it.
4. Click Install from library.

The ZIP is installed with --force, so an existing install of the same plugin or theme is replaced.

Activate, deactivate or delete a plugin

Each row of the plugin table has the buttons that apply to its state:

• Deactivate appears for an active plugin.
• Activate and Delete appear for an inactive plugin.
• Must-use plugins and drop-ins show as must-use or drop-in and have no buttons.

Before you delete a plugin or theme

Delete removes the plugin’s files from disk and from WordPress’s plugin registry. The plugin’s database tables and options stay in place. For a theme, the files are removed and database options such as customizer settings stay.

Confirm a backup first: open the hosting’s Backups tab and check that the newest entry shows the state ok. To undo a deletion, install the same plugin or theme again, or restore the files from that backup. Without a backup, the files cannot be recovered from the panel.

Update plugins and themes

• Click Update on a row that shows → <version> available.
• Click Update all in the group header to update everything that has an update. The button appears only while updates are pending.
• A theme row also has Activate (for any theme that is not active) and Delete (for a theme that is neither active nor the parent of the active one). See the caution above before you delete.

These actions update one item or one batch and take no backup. For backups taken before an update, see Update WordPress, plugins and themes.

Control automatic updates for one plugin

The Auto-update column shows on or off for each plugin. Click it to switch. This is WordPress’s own per-plugin automatic update flag, set with wp-cli. It is separate from the site-wide nightly sweep described in Update WordPress, plugins and themes.

When the nightly sweep fails to update a plugin twice in a row, Hyperion pauses that plugin for 30 days. The row then shows Auto-update paused under the version, with the last error as a tooltip, and a Resume button. Click Resume after you have fixed the cause, typically by adding the plugin’s license key. The next sweep tries the plugin again.

Check that it worked

After each action the page reloads on the WordPress tab with a message such as Plugin ok: ... or Theme ok: .... The plugin or theme table shows the new state, version or row. A plugin or theme action also empties the site’s page cache, so visitors see the change.

To read the same lists from a shell:

hctl wp plugins example.com

hctl wp plugin, hctl wp theme and hctl wp themes cover the same actions.

If it fails

• “Couldn’t list plugins” or “Couldn’t list themes”: WordPress core is on disk, but wp-cli could not start WordPress, typically a database-connection problem or a PHP error during startup. The panel prints the error and the exact command to run on the node as the site user. If a plugin is the cause, see Repair a broken WordPress site.
• A failed action redirects back with Plugin failed: or Theme failed: followed by the full wp-cli output.
• “plugin install requires a source”: the Source field was empty.
• “sudo is not installed on this node”: every wp-cli call runs through sudo. Re-run update.sh on the node, which installs it.
• A plugin update keeps failing and the row says Auto-update paused: commercial plugins gate their updates behind a license key. Add the license key, then click Resume.

Related

• Restore a site from a backup