Note: Everything below must be done on live, not staging.
Setup RWP: Updates Reporting plugin
Our plugin “RWP: Updates Reporting” connects a website to our Client Site and reports any auto-updates so that they get added to monthly reports for the website.
- Go to Plugins page in WP Admin
- Click “Add new”
- Click “Upload Plugin”
- Download to your computer, then upload to the site the latest version of our plugin:
rwp-updates-reporting-2.8.1.1.zip - Click “Install Now”
- Click “Activate” button when prompted
You should see a message that the site has connected to the Client Site with an ID number similar to this:
Note: If any steps fail or some other message appears contact Jeremy (or relevant person) and do not proceed to the next section.
Turn on auto-updates for plugins
Typically we want this done after we’ve done our 1st manual update process to have a human make sure a site can be brought fully up-to-date w/o issue. The auto-updates will handle future updates, aside from our periodic manual update process and site checks.
- Go to Plugins page in WP Admin
- Click the Check All box
- Select “Enable Auto-updates” from drop-down
- Click Apply
- Click “Auto-updates Disabled” at the top of the Plugins page (if applicable) and try to enable any other auto-updates that didn’t turn on from the previous steps and may require you to enable auto-updates from within their settings page (Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights is currently one such example)
Additional Info
Background Updates run roughly every 12 hours and if any errors in updates occur, the same error log email will be sent every 12 hours until resolved. Not sure if that is the case yet for WP 5.5+.
3rd party themes & plugins
Our experience has shown that most (all?) 3rd party themes do not support auto-updates and some plugins do not either. That is rapidly changing for plugins (especially post-WP 5.5) but it is sort of dangerous to update a theme automatically for anything other than bug/security fixes. Theme updates will generally be handled manually.