If the recent Microsoft/Crowdstrike disaster taught us anything, it’s the importance of proper update management. This is just as true for WordPress automatic updates as it is for the millions of Windows systems affected by Crowdstrike’s update failure.
That global outage highlighted that while automating updates can save time, it also carries significant risks.
Let’s explore the pros and cons of automatic WordPress updates to help you decide if they’re right for your online business. We’ll also show you how to turn these updates off and back on again.
What Are Automatic Updates in WordPress?
Automatic updates are a WordPress feature that automatically installs new versions of the essential files needed to keep your website secure and up-to-date.
The WordPress ecosystem is always evolving, making these updates crucial for ongoing WordPress maintenance. They provide security patches, bug fixes, and performance upgrades.
Without them, the overall user experience you offer would gradually diminish due to reduced loading speeds. Your site could become a haven for bad actors who exploit security vulnerabilities in unpatched WordPress setups.
While you can still handle these updates manually, switching to WordPress auto updates offers a set-it-and-forget-it approach, allowing you to ensure your website remains at its best even without your input.
Different Types of WordPress Updates
Core updates
These updates to the core WordPress software come in two types; minor and major.
Minor updates are typically small bug fixes or security patches. As of WordPress 3.7, these are automatically installed by default.
Major updates generally involve upgrading to a new version of WordPress, introducing new features and significant improvements. As a rule, these are handled manually via the one-click update button found in the Updates menu from your WordPress dashboard.
However, it is possible to automate them by using a plugin or making changes to the WordPress core files, we’ll show you exactly how to do that at the end of this guide.
Plugin updates
Developers generally release plugin updates for one of two reasons.
- To maintain compatibility with WordPress core updates
- To fix bugs, address security problems, or introduce new features.
Since WordPress 5.5, it’s possible to set plugins to update automatically, though you can still do this manually if you prefer.
Theme updates
As with plugins, theme updates are released to upgrade security or functionality, fix bugs, or simply maintain compatibility with new versions of WordPress.
By default, these updates are set to be handled manually, so you’ll see a notification like the one above any time a theme needs updating.
That said, you can enable automatic WordPress theme updates for individual themes as long as the developer hasn’t disabled that option.
Translation file updates
Portable Object (.po) and Machine Object (.mo) translation files are critical components of multilingual websites, ensuring that everything is properly displayed in different languages.
WordPress typically installs translation file updates automatically, though some users -especially those of you using custom translation files- can still update them manually if necessary.
Pros of Automatic WordPress Updates
1. Improved Security
If we could only list one benefit of enabling automatic WordPress updates, strengthening the security of your website would be it.
As the most popular CMS in the world, WordPress accounts for over 43% of all websites on the Internet, making it a prime target for malicious actors.
Those WordPress sites that run out of date core, theme, or plugin files are especially attractive, as their security vulnerabilities can easily be exploited, providing effortless back-door access to criminals who want to steal your data or otherwise compromise the integrity of your website.
In fact, Internet security specialists Sucuri note that more than 49% of compromised WordPress sites were out of date at the time they were hacked.
Although security plugins can go a long way to protecting your site, they’re hardly a definitive solution.
Enabling automatic updates ensures that the latest patches are always implanted on your site, meaning any such backdoor vulnerabilities are quickly blocked shut to unauthorized users.
2. Bug Fixes and Improvements
With users and search engines placing a high priority on the speed it takes a web page to load, performance matters more than ever.
Google itself notes that 61% of users would move to another website right away if they didn’t immediately find what they’re looking for.
Even if your website performs fast enough, the slightest bug in a theme, plugin, or one of your core files could result in reduced functionality, creating the kind of poor user experience that has visitors leaving anyway.
All this is another strong argument for turning on WordPress automatic updates. As soon as a performance boost or a bug fix is issued, it’s immediately applied to your site, ensuring that everything runs smoothly.
3. Convenience
Above all, the main benefit of automating your updates is that it’s much more convenient than doing it all manually.
As any experienced site owner will tell you, managing a website takes a lot of time and effort.
If you’re not keeping the design fresh and current, you’re pouring hours into creating content, optimizing for SEO, or converting visitors into paying customers.
That’s before you factor in the need to be constantly on the lookout for updates and take the time to install them.
Imagine taking a week’s vacation and missing out on an important update that could be keeping your site safer and making it better optimized for your visitors.
Or how about being short on time and having to decide between posting new content to grow your site or installing updates?
When you automate the process, that’s never an issue.
Even if you don’t check on your site, you can still be sure that it’s running at its best with practically no effort on your part. What’s more, when the automated process is doing all the hard work for you, you’re left with more time and energy to spend on growing your website in other ways.
Cons of Automatic WordPress Updates
1. Potential Compatibility Issues
Upgrading WordPress doesn’t always go smoothly. It’s not unheard of for issues to occur when newly updated code proves to be incompatible with a website’s current code.
For example, a WordPress core update may render the code behind a plugin unusable, causing plugin glitches that result in unexpected functionality problems or complete downtime.
This is bad enough when you’re handling your updates manually, but at least then you can see the issue right away and spring into action to fix it.
With WordPress auto-updates, you’re not afforded the same luxury.
If your site is set to automatically update, a compatibility issue could occur and it could be hours, if not longer, before you even notice it.
Naturally, this could result in a loss of visitors, lower conversion rates, and an overall negative impact on your business.
2. Loss of Control
Of course, one way to avoid compatibility issues and other errors is to test out your updates in a staging environment. That way, you can ensure that they work before pushing them out to your live website.
Automating this process removes that option, leaving you with no control over when your site is updated or the consequences of said updates.
3. Unexpected Errors and Bugs
Though WordPress developers strive to ensure new updates are tested and fully operational, things do occasionally go away.
The slightest error in a line of code could lead to anything from a minor functionality issue to a site-wide problem with your design layout, or worse.
Sure, this may happen regardless of whether your updates are automated or handled manually, but at least with the latter approach, you can pick up on such problems immediately.
With automated updates, there’s a risk of taking ‘set-it-and-forget-it’ all too literally and not consistently checking that everything is working as it should.
As with compatibility problems, this could mean that you could have a long period of time during which you’re inadvertently running a faulty website without even knowing it.
4. Overwriting Custom Modifications
One of the main reasons that WordPress is so popular is that it can be fully customized to suit the unique needs of individual users.
If you’ve taken advantage of that by deploying modifications such as custom code, you run the risk of losing that when an automatic update overrides all your hard work.
For example, say you’re running an eCommerce store with a bespoke checkout process. When an automated update occurs, it could wipe that out and revert your site back to the default checkout.
How to Manage Automatic Updates for WordPress
If the above pros and cons have swayed you one way or another, the following section will show you how to turn off automatic updates, and how to turn them back on again.
How to Disable Automatic Updates for WordPress
Learning how to disable automatic updates for WordPress is a straightforward process. It simply depends on which type of updates you want to disable:
WordPress Core Files
Unfortunately, there is no built-in option to disable core WordPress automatic updates, but it can still be done by adding the following line of code to your wp-config file:
define( 'WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', false );You’ll typically find the wp-config.php file in the root directory of your website, accessible via either FTP or your hosting company’s file manager.
Add the code to your file, save it, and you’ll have successfully turned off WordPress auto updates. From that point, WordPress will send you a notification whenever a new update is available so that you can take care of it yourself in your own time.
Plugins
Turning off the automatic plugin update WordPress feature can be done via your plugin dashboard.
To disable automatic updates for all plugins, click in the checkbox next to the word Plugin then use the Bulk actions drop-down to select Disable Auto Updates and click Apply.
For individual plugins, simply click the Disable auto-updates link in the right-hand column labeled ‘automatic updates.
Themes
You can disable WordPress automatic updates for individual themes by navigating to the themes menu from your dashboard and tapping the *Theme Details* button on your required theme.
From there, look for the link labeled Disable auto-updates which you’ll find just above the description. Click that, and WordPress turns off automatic updates for that theme.
How to Enable Automatic Updates for WordPress
The process of enabling automatic updates for WordPress is as easy as simply reversing the steps above.
For example, to enable WordPress core updates, add the following line of code to your wp-config.php file:
define( 'WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', true );For plugins, select Enable auto-updates in the Bulk actions menu or click the link next to an individual plugin.
For themes, go to the required theme and click Enable auto-updates.
Alternatively, you could do all this using a plugin like Easy Updates Manager.
This adds a new item to your dashboard menu named Updates options. Select that, and you can toggle all updates on or off using a one-click master switch, You can also use this plugin to manually configure your updates, such as by enabling automatic plugin updates but disabling core updates.
The Pros and Cons of WordPress Automatic Updates: Final Thoughts
After weighing the pros and cons, it’s clear that enabling WordPress automatic updates has its upsides and downsides.
On the plus side, automatic updates save time and ensure your website remains secure and optimized, even if you’re not checking it daily. However, the set-it-and-forget-it approach can lead to issues like compatibility problems, bugs, or custom code overwrites that might go unnoticed.
There’s also a third option: Outsourced WordPress maintenance. At UnlimitedWP, we offer monthly WordPress care plans that include updates for your themes, plugins, and core files.
This gives you the convenience and time-saving benefits of automatic updates, along with the reliability of manual updates handled by experienced WordPress professionals.