We currently manage around 50+ wordpress sites. Keeping plugins up to date on a wordpress site quickly became a daily routine. This task quickly had to be tasked to one of our team members on a daily basis.
Enabling Automatic Updates
By default, every site has automatic updates enabled for minor core releases and translation files. This does not include plugin updates or major releases of core.
You can enable Automatic updates to Core by placing the following in your wp-config.php file.
define( 'WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', true );
The same can be done to plugins/themes however these are done via filter.
Note: Do not add add_filter() calls in wp-config.php – causes conflicts with WP-CLI and possibly other problems. Add to theme functions.php
Automatic updates for All plugins:
add_filter( 'auto_update_plugin', '__return_true' );
Automatic updates for All themes:
add_filter( 'auto_update_theme', '__return_true' );
Why Should be Updates be made regularly?
- Better Security.
- Making sure your plugin is up to date with the developer for any known bug fixes or any new features.