How to disable Automatic Updates in WordPress

WordPress core team mostly pushes updates in WordPress for better results for your website. Apart from all of these it is better to update WordPress for website health. In other cases WordPress upgrades its theme and plugin also. The WordPress Updates reduce much vulnerability that user might face during run time. In this post we are going to learn how to disable automatic updates in WordPress.

Upgrading a WordPress theme/plugin has many benefits. But sometimes it happens that updates in background can break your WordPress present site which could be harmful for your site. You might faces to lose your business and customers too.

WordPress updates its core by default because of some security reasons. Still you can disable the updates by many other ways; here one of them is by installing Easy Updates Manager Plugin.

So, in this article we will discuss about how to disable automatic updates in WordPress and later we can update desired plugins or theme or core accordingly manually.

How to disable automatic updates WordPress without any plugin

There are some companies who do not prefer much plugins to install into their websites due to confliction issues or they just want to keep it simple. In this case you can made change in “wp-config.php” file:

define( 'WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', false );

this will disable all the wordPress updates.

On other hand if you want only major updates in wordPress and disable the development updates.

/* Allow only minor WordPress updates */

define( 'WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', minor );

If you want updates notification ‘ON’ for wordPress themes and plugins so In that case there are some filters that you can be added in functions.php file of current activate theme.

Let’s, see how to disable plugin updates:

/* Disable WordPress Plugin updates */

add_filter( 'auto_update_plugin', '__return_false' );

Now let see how to disable theme updates:

/* Disable WordPress Plugin theme */

add_filter( 'auto_update_theme', '__return_false' );

Try to keep in habit to comment all the code for best practices. Now let’s try another way of disabling the regular updates which does not include coding.

Disable using Easy Updates Manager Plugin

How to disable Automatic Updates in WordPress

WordPress Themes and Plugins comes with lot of options you can see so that even non technical person can easily work with that. Of course before making any new change into your website it is always better to take backup.

So for that I am recommending one Plugin called UpDraft Plus which also have premium version to take backup so in case your site gets break you would have backup for safe side. Just for security reasons if you updating everything by default.

So, let’s have a look into the Plugin steps, Just install the “Easy Updates Manager” from add Plugin and activate it.

After Activating the Plugin , For further configuration we will move to Dashboard » Updates Options for settings.

disable automatic updates

Here you can select “Disable all Update”, well of course it is not wise idea to recommend. So Except that it is better to select any of options which given in the settings. If you do not want to update or auto update plugins so you can select options from Plugin updates section.

Just like Plugin options you can see the options for theme and translation also. So you can select for them too.

disable automatic updates

If you select “Disable Plugin updates” or “Disable theme updates” instead of “Disable Auto updates”, then will not receive any notification alert for themes or plugins.

Easy Updates manager also have logs so you can check the updates of themes and Plugin which you have recently updated so if anything which breaks in your website you can rollback.

Now we have seen how we can disable the updates in WordPress, thus we have to see also the advantages and disadvantages of disabling the updates.

Pros of WordPress Auto Updates

Auto updates have great facility for those who frequently forget to upgrade their site and that is really good for security purpose.

In very early time updating WordPress was in hand of wordPress hosting which is now available for all, so we have to take benefit of that release.

Auto updates saves time, and it also resolves your broken site issues by the time. So, minor updates will also take care of under the auto updates.

Cons of WordPress Auto Updates

Minor updates are not responsible for your site break so the wordPress team has to be alert while updating the wordPress where at little pitch the chances are there that the site could break.

If you have modified your theme files that can also need to come up with security issues where the changes become high that your site breaks.

You will not get updates notification all the time so you have to check manually for that if something has updated in the background.

Basically it is all up to you whether you want to update automatically or want to disable. If your website is not that big with higher risk and everything works fine, if you do not have much plugins then you can disable auto updates or manually update the core wordPress.

If user is running online store and if you do not want lose your customers because of breaks issues then updating necessary plugins or theme by taking back up and updating it with maintenance mode is a better option, then only you can update the theme or wordPress plugins.

Hope this article helps you to decide whether auto update is a better option or disable the WordPress updates. We can suggest update the plugins or theme or WordPress manually for better result.

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