WordPress 3.7
New features of this major release are:
– Background updates. Automatic installation for security and bug fix minor updates are enabled by default. As official blog says, you may sleep, but critical update will be applied without your participation.
– Stronger password recommendations checked during new password creation and followed WordPress password strongness meter. It recognizes common mistakes that can weaken your password: dates, names, keyboard patterns (123456789), and even pop culture references;
– Improved search results. Search results are ordered better in relevance to the post content, not by publication date only.;
– Better global support. As the part of realized automatic update engine WordPress 3.7 adds support for automatically installing the right language files and keeping them up to date.
I updated all my test sites first, then I setup WordPress version 3.7 to the live servers. All updates finished successfully. There are no any troubles in all cases. Update process is fully automatic as usual. It may prompt to update the database. So one click may be needed to finish it.
The automatic updates feature raise the wave of intensive discussions among WordPress community. The participants are splitted on two parts. First one is for disabling this functionality and manual installation of any updates. Second part is for the technical progress and high speed and more high percent of security update installation all over the world.
Independently to what part you include yourself, if you care about the subject, it is important to carefully read this article “The definitive guide to disabling auto updates in WordPress 3.7” from Andrew Nacin, WordPress core developer. And only then take your own decision according to your own situation.
In short, it is possible to disable WordPress automatic updates installation a few different ways. There is no user interface for that. You need define special PHP constant for the way you select.
Disable all updates
The constant AUTOMATIC_UPDATER_DISABLED can be used to disable the automatic updater entirely. It acts almost the same way as the DISALLOW_FILE_MODS constant, which blocks any kind of filesystem changes, not just by background updates but by all users as well.
define(AUTOMATIC_UPDATER_DISABLED, 1); |
It fully disables update feature, not just core updates. You may use a filter with the same name, automatic_updater_disabled. It overrides the PHP constant.
function my_disable_automatic_updater() { return true; } add_filter('automatic_updater_disabled', 'my_disable_automatic_updater'); |
Disable core updates
To change core updates strategy use the WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE PHP constant:
# Disables all core updates: define( 'WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', false ); # Enables all core updates, including minor and major: define( 'WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', true ); # Enables core updates for minor releases (default): define( 'WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', 'minor' ); |
Happy blogging!
