Keeping WordPress and the themes and plug-ins you have installed on your website up to date is one of the most important things you can do as a website owner. One of the biggest reasons why websites get hacked is because they are running outdated versions of WordPress, themes, and plug-ins which have known security vulnerabilities that can be easily targeted and exploited by hackers. According to the latest security research, 13,000 WordPress websites get hacked every day. That’s around 9 per minute, 390,000 per month, and 4.7 million per year. This can be avoided by enabling auto-updates for your WordPress, themes, and plugins.
Why Should You Enable Auto Updates
- Security updates are released all the time for WordPress, themes, and plugins fixing security vulnerabilities
- Your website is less likely to get hacked.
- Updates include new features and improvements
- Updates will ensure your website is compatible with the latest PHP version
- If your website gets hacked it will have a serious impact on your business
WordPress Core Updates
WordPress by default enables automatic updates for core releases. There are two types of core releases available which include major and minor. Major versions generally include new features while the minor version is released for security/maintenance purposes. From WordPress 5.6 onwards, automatic updates for minor releases are enabled by default.
You can change the settings for core major or minor releases updates via
- Dashboard
- Updates
- Switch to automatic updates for maintenance and security releases
How To Enable Auto Updates For Plugins
To enable auto-updates for the plugins you have installed on your website complete the following steps
- Select the Plugins menu and Installed Plugins section
- You will see the list of all installed plugins on your site.
- You can see the “Automatic Updates” status of each plugin in the last column of the layout.
- By default, automatic updates are disabled for plugins
- Click on the “Enable auto-updates” link to turn it on the auto-update feature
Enable Auto-updates For Themes
To enable auto-updates for the themes you have installed on your website complete the following steps
- Login to your WordPress admin dashboard and select the Appearance menu and the Themes section.
- From there Here you can view all the installed themes on your site and hover over the active theme.
- When you hover over the theme the Theme Details button will appear
- Click on the theme detail button which will take you to another option where you can click on the Enable auto-updates button to enable updates for the theme
