How To Enable/Disable WordPress Automatic Updates in 2024

Table of Contents [TOC]

WordPress Automatic Updates
WordPress Automatic Updates – FAQ’s

WordPress Automatic Updates

You must have these questions in your mind:

What is the need for Automatic WordPress Updates?

What automatic updates mean?

How to Enable / disable Automatic Updates in WordPress?

How do I turn on automatic updates in WordPress?

How do I turn off automatic updates for WordPress?

Updating WordPress is crucial and the WordPress auto-upgrade for WordPress is bliss. It makes your work easier and it is a reliable option for website operators. Then the question is how does WordPress Auto-Update work?

For most users, it’s easy to install the latest update of WordPress manually by clicking the update button in their WP admin panel. But for those with several sites or busy websites, this can prove to be a tedious task. That’s why most people choose to use an automatic update plugin for their site/s.

If you’re using one of these plugins, you should be aware that they don’t always work as intended. When a plugin’s database needs updating or when it stops working with a new version of WordPress, this can cause problems on your site. If you’ve never experienced this before, you will now!

Manually Update WordPress is not an easy task but is essential for maintaining a good reputation and attracting the audience for your website. The performance and security of the website are the credentials on which a particular site operates and WordPress updates ensure the desired success of it.

ALSO CHECK OUT – DETAILED GUIDE ON WORDPRESS SECURITY UPDATES

Let’s take a deep dive into WordPress automatic updates, how to use update options in WordPress? In this post we are going to tell you how to enable or disable automatic WordPress updates? By following this Comprehensive WordPress automatic updates management guide you can easily enable or disable automatic updates for WordPress

The automatic system is free of cost and requires minimum user input in the process. Website operation requires a great amount of handwork and you constantly feel a need for updating your platform. Below is a comprehensive guide to WordPress automatic updates management.

How Do WordPress Automatic Updates Work?

The WordPress auto-update feature checks regularly to see if there is a new version of WordPress available and automatically installs it without any user intervention.

To improve website security WordPress introduced an automatic update system in 2013, named WordPress 3.7. This allowed the user to automatically install the minor release enhancing the website’s security. It is beneficial to Secure your WordPress Website from any sort of vulnerabilities.

By default, the feature will manage minor releases and transfer of files but still will give you an attorney to customize any update. Read about Email Automation on WordPress here.

An option to disable the automatic update is also provided. Automatic update emails are part of transactional emails, which you can send using free SMTP Servers.

When and Why You Should Automatically Update WordPress Plugins?

Keeping your website, themes, and plugins updated is crucial for the firmness and security of the website. An automatic update will help your WordPress website to automatically update itself if minor releases or security changes are available. This reduces your work and you can more efficiently work for the operation of your website. Themes and plugins need to be constantly updated to enjoy new features and fixes.

Also Read:

Some plugins require updates weekly and it gets burdensome for the website owner to update every time they log in. Automatic update entrusts the developer to update these credentials on your behave thus making your work and program more updated. This can allow you to keep your website safe and can save you a lot of your time.

Types of WordPress Auto Updates

There are four types of automatic background updates, they include :

Core updates
Plugin updates
Theme updates,
Translation file updates.

The core update is WordPress update and it includes

Updates amiable only to development installations
The update which is enabled by default that comprises of maintenance and security updates, Minor updates
Updates affecting the features and functionality of the site, Major updates

Managing Auto Updates Using the Wp-config.php File

WordPress by enabling to use of wp-config.php file makes it easier to turn updates on and off. Constants need to be defined in wp-config.php to configure automatic updates. It’s explained below:

Disabling auto-update: Add : define( ‘AUTOMATIC_UPDATER_DISABLED’, true ); to your wp-config.php file

Minor core and translation file updates are set as a default to ensure good performance.

To further edit the updates, you can follow the following steps

define( ‘WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE’, true );

Here, True indicates development, minor and updates are turned on

False indicates development, minor and updates are turned off

Minor indicates, development and major updates are turned off and minor updates are turned on

Managing Auto Updates Adding Codes

The website consists of many plugins and their constant update is crucial for the proper functioning of the site. Editing plugins can help you enable automatic update system for WordPress ON. Adding code to the theme’s functions.php file can help you update the system. Following steps can be followed

add_filter( ‘auto_update_plugin’ , ‘__return_true’ );

This code demands automatic updater to install plugin updates as soon as available.

In case of theme updates, you can add the following code

add_filter( ‘auto_update_theme’ , ‘__return_true’ );

Managing Auto Updates Using Plugin

This method asks for downloading Easy Updates Manager plugin. This will not indulge you in coding to enable automatic updater and is easy to follow. Easy Updates Manager plugin is free to follow and comes with a variety of functions to use. Basic functions are cost-free and if you would like to enjoy premium, it’s also available.

You can find this manager on the dashboard of your WordPress from the plugin menu. After installing and activate, the user can activate it’s preferred setting from the Configure option.

Manually Enable Automatic Update for Major Releases in WordPress

This method again demands to add codes to your file and the following steps explain it :

define( ‘WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE’, true );

The above code should be added to the site’s wp-config.php file. This code enables night plugins as well. To turn them off, the following code can be used and can be added to the site-specific plugin.

add_filter( ‘allow_dev_auto_core_updates’, ‘__return_false’ );

This code will disable night plugin updates.

How To Disable automatic updates in WordPress?

Although we personally do not advise deactivating automatic updates, since their function is precisely to avoid greater evils (that they hack us), it is true that sometimes it can be advisable.

For example, let’s imagine that we have an eCommerce on which our income depends. Or even a marketplace that other people’s income depends on. In those cases having automatic updates can be a bit dangerous.

While it is true that its main objective is to keep us “safe”, it is also true that on some occasions (very remote, but existing) it may affect another plugin or create an incompatibility that may affect the proper functioning of the website. And that means that customers may not be able to buy, or even that the web is “broken”. And that is not a scenario that we do not want at all.

By the way, if that happens, we recommend the WordPress emergency course, to solve any type of error or “blank screen”.

Anyway, the point is that if we want to disable automatic updates, we only have to add a line of code in the wp-config file:

define ('AUTOMATIC_UPDATER_DISABLED', true);

Just by copying and pasting that line we will have already deactivated them. All of them. Those of WordPress, plugins, and themes … Each and every one of them.

And if we only want to deactivate the WordPress ones, this would be our line:

define ('WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', false);

As simple as that. But beware! If we do that, we must be responsible for carrying out the updates ourselves. Disabling them can be a big problem if we don’t update WordPress manually on a regular basis.

WordPress Automatic Updates – FAQ’s

Why Do I Need to Install WordPress Updates?

Updating the WordPress Website regularly is an important task, else anybody especially the attacker could get Backdoor Entry on a WordPress website & hack it within minutes. The audience getting attracted to your work demands the latest updates and the reputation of your website increases. There are four main reasons why you should use WordPress updates

Security
Fixes bugs
New features
Improved performance of the website

You can find and read more about List Of WordPress Releases, which could help you understand why is WordPress update is so important?

WordPress Security

WordPress Security is a major concern of all website operators. Following this WordPress security checklist could protect your WordPress website from any vulnerable exploit or malware attack. WordPress is known by all today. The popularity of the site makes it target for all hackers.

WordPress Updates protect your website from any harmful WordPress attack like WordPress Brute Force Attacks, WordPress DDoS Attack, or vulnerable exploit like WordPress Zero-Day Exploits that might affect the core of your website.

You put a lot of hard work in operating your site and you are constantly stressed about its protection. Updating frees you from such stress and makes your website more reliable for the audience. Your core, plugins, and themes, all three should be protected.

Bug Fixes

Bugs are errors in a computer program or system and they make or reduce the performance of the system. It’s important to timely improve them. It sometimes makes the website crash. So it’s important to cure them.

New Features and Performance

WordPress is constantly updated and requires updating for its users to enjoy newly developed functions. Plugins and themes are also continuously improving and to make your website enjoy these features and developed programs updating becomes mandatory.

Are WordPress Updates Safe for My Website?

WordPress updates are safe and they do not generally act as a hindrance to the user. It is always advisable to the Backup WordPress database, before updating your website. If in case a WordPress website is hacked, the admin loses control to the admin area of the website.

Its database is the first target of every smart hacker to gain overall control of the website. That’s why it is recommended to first create the backup of your WordPress website.

Experts ask the user to deactivate all the plugins before updating WordPress Core. If any problem occurs that. It can make your website unusable. Make sure to reactivate your website after the update is done.

Updates are generally safe and these are the precautionary measure that users should take care of while updating the site.

Can I Also Automatically Update WordPress Plugins?

Yes, plugins can be automatically updated. It is very easy to update the automatic WordPress plugins. It has been explained above and you can also do it by opening functions.php file in your computer and adding code given below

add_filter( ‘auto_update_plugin’, ‘__return_true’ );

And save for further changes.

Can I Install WordPress Updates on multiple websites automatically?

Managing and updating the website is a crucial step. It can also be a time-consuming process. But thankfully, it is easy to manage all these updates from one single dashboard. You can manage the update whenever you want. All necessary updates can easily be installed from a single dashboard. They are available at your single click.

You can also use tools like

These tools will make the managing task easy and less time-consuming. These tools are reliable and have worked effectively. This will definitely improve your productivity.

Also Read – WordPress site Maintenance Checklist

How to Rollback to a Previous Version of Plugin After Update?

Sometimes the site might break due to certain update and you have to get back to the previous version of the plugin. The poor performance of the website can seriously harm your website and you need to take that down immediately. This can be done very easily with simple steps.

The first thing to keep in mind is to have a backup your WordPress site. Backup is crucial to help you in a situation, just in case. You can download WordPress backup solution for it. Rolling back the update gets easier when you know what the issue is and it can easily be tackled by the simple steps.

All you need to do is download and activate the WP Rollback plugin. After activating this you will see rollback options for each plugin installed. By clicking it you are able to get back to your desired version. This can also be done for themes. This feature removes the fear a user can have while installing certain updates. This makes it easy to get back to your earlier stage in case of any trouble.

When and Why to Disable WP Automatic updates?

These new features are eye-catching and they have been of great help for the users. As discussed above it increases your productivity and reliability. But it is still not advisable to turn these features on every time. Sometimes incompatibilities are experienced in plugins and themes that could damage your website. If the website operates on a variety of plugins, manually updating them makes you more familiar with the problem.

Themes might get disturbed due to updates. WordPress might overwrite your file if a plugin with the same name is found. You should be careful about this.

Control Automatic Update Feature With Plugins

Controlling the update through plugins is the easiest way to do it. You don’t require technical codes to make it work.

You need to install the Easy Update Manager for the same. This is a single tick solution for all the updates. You can also select themes and plugins individually for the update. Manual updating through plugins is easy but demands a great amount of attention. If something went wrong then all the updates have to be reverted back to the previous one to ensure no damage is done to the website.

WP Rollback allows you to access that feature. It also makes it mandatory to have a backup for your website. One needs to be sure about the auto-update system. This can be done through installing a Background Update Tester and it shows you all the reports.

How to Automatically Update WordPress Plugins & Themes

Premium Plugins & Themes can be updated by using the ManageWP dashboard and then choose to update them all separately under the plugin and theme option of the website.

How To Enable or Disable WordPress Automatic Updates