How to Set Up Automatic Updates on Your Website

The security of your WordPress site depends above all on updates. Of course, this is nothing new — but neglecting updates can quickly bring your entire operation crashing down.

What could be more frustrating than finding yourself faced with countless bugs, painfully slow loading times, and precious time lost trying to fix problems on your site? Updating is one of the essential actions you must take on WordPress to improve both security and quality. Here is why:

The WordPress engine (Core) and certain Plugins change versions regularly, because the WordPress ecosystem is constantly evolving. As your site's administrator, this can make you nervous about incompatibility issues. But ignoring updates is not a solution either — particularly when it comes to security.

To give a simple example, just think about what happens to a smartphone or any other operating system that has not been updated regularly.

So, as you will have gathered, failing to update leaves your site vulnerable. But how do you go about it? How do you set up automatic updates on a WordPress site? It is not particularly complex:

1. Back Up Your Site

As obvious as it may seem, a complete backup of your site is strongly recommended — from your FTP files to your SQL database. If this feels like a "waste of time", you can simply turn to specialist plugins, or for a more comprehensive solution, call on our maintenance service.

2. Deactivate Cache Plugins

For those worried about incompatibility, it is important to temporarily deactivate cache plugins such as WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache, as well as those provided by your hosting provider. Skipping this step can create various issues with your database.

3. The Update

Before setting up automatic updates, it is worth knowing that there are several types:

• Core updates
• Plugin updates
• Theme updates
• Translation file updates

When focusing on the two main types — minor updates (which cover maintenance and security) and major updates (significant updates) — you need to look at the "wp-config.php" configuration file.

Simply assign a value to the "WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE" parameter, which controls automatic updates:

• true – means both minor and major updates are downloaded and installed
• false – means none of these updates will be downloaded or installed
• minor – means only minor updates are downloaded and installed.

To configure automatic updates, simply add the parameter to the wp-config.php file as follows: 'WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', true

To verify that the process has worked, your WordPress site will indicate that the update regime is active.

Over to you!

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