Great ideas, but let me tell you some of the reasons why we don ‘t do these things.
First, we do offer some configuration on email notifications. You can enable or disable “Alert on critical problems” and “Alert on warnings”. You are correct that it isn’t more granular than that but for simplicity’s sake we chose to make it this way. Remember not everyone is as security savvy as you are. You can also limit the number of emails you get to further pare down the number you receive.
Second, making themes and plugins out of date alerts anything but a critical issue would really be a bad idea. I would say most of the hacks we encounter, the sites that have been exploited, have started from out of date plugins or themes, even disabled ones, on the infected website. This is a huge security risk and to say it wasn’t critical to update them wouldn’t really say much for our being a security company. Again, thinking back to the first question, you probably don’t need reminded about this. Many wordpress users do.
Last, sometimes these plugins need to be updated as soon as the plugin is available. These ‘zero day’ vulnerabilities are usually pretty nasty and when announced need to be patched ASAP. The revslider comes to mind here.
Still great thoughts and I appreciate you taking the time to write them. I’m passing this on to our dev team to look at for ideas.
Thanks!
tim
Tim, thanks for your response. I now understand your point of view on this. And you’re right….
The issue now then Installatron doesn’t offer immediate update… which I thought is a good thing because I wouldn’t want my site to be updating during the day when it’s active with visitors… What are your thoughts on that?
I do have email frequency down to 1 a day but the issue as admin is that I get 1 email from 7 different websites on same plugin… and when I get ‘critical email’, I do want to check it manually so that I can respond. But so far.. it’s only been about the plugin. now that’s a GOOD THING, of course… and thought I’d start discussion here to see if we can find a way to minimize ‘my annoyance’.
Having said that, I’ll also contact installatron and see if they can offer immediate update to start. And perhaps your team can look into ‘Turn off notification on plugin update’ feature with warning that ‘turn off at your own risk’ for people like me.
As I write this, this is very conflicting issue… I can really support both argument myself… lol
