How to enable automatic update?

  • Resolved cjessing

    (@cjessing)


    11 years, 12 months ago

    Hi gurus

    I have two WP sites running. From 3.7 one of them started doing automatic updates and sending me mails that the site had been updated. The other one didn’t. I have manually updated the other one so they are both on 3.8.2 now.

    They’re both one-click installations from my hosting provider but maybe not initially the same version.

    I have compared the wp-config.php files and the only differencies are that in the auto updating site I have AUTH_KEY and SECURE_AUTH_KEY defined. In the other I don’t. In the other (the non-auto updating) I have WP_CACHE set to true.

    Is there a checkbox I need to tick to make my site auto update? Or a plugin I need to install?

    Pls help

    Thanks in advance 🙂

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)
  • Saravanan S, a11n

    (@simplysaru)

    11 years, 12 months ago

    Automatic updates are part of the default WordPress setup since 3.7. Were both the installations running 3.7 before you updated them to 3.8.2? If one of them was running 3.6 or earlier versions, that WordPress instance wouldn’t have updated automatically.

    By default they should update automatically. You don’t need any plugins nor do they have any check boxes to enable them. If WordPress isn’t able to auto update, probably the WordPress process doesn’t have file permissions to update the files. Could you check if the directories have proper file permissions? You could learn more about file permissions here.

    Now that both installations are on 3.8.2, ideally they should update moving forward.

    Thread Starter cjessing

    (@cjessing)

    11 years, 12 months ago

    Both installations have been updated with all updates from 3.7 to the current 3.8.2. One of them have done the update automatically each time. The other one needs help each time. File permissions are identical on both installations.

    Can the .htaccess have any influence?

    Is there any way to debug the issue?

    Saravanan S, a11n

    (@simplysaru)

    11 years, 12 months ago

    Are both the instances of WP running on the same host? I am not sure if the .htaccess file plays a part in the background update process. BTW does the WP instance support updating files without entering FTP credentials ? Usually the site admin gets an email on successful update or failure with error details(i.e if mail is configured correctly).

    Thread Starter cjessing

    (@cjessing)

    11 years, 12 months ago

    The sites are on two different domains but hosted under the same account. They are in two different folders under public_html:

    /blog
    /otherdomain.com

    so that they are accessed using

    http://domain.com/blog <<<– This is the one auto updating
    http://otherdomain.com

    I do the manual update at the click of a button – no credentials required. I can’t remember if I entered the credentials initially doing the first update way back when…

    Saravanan S, a11n

    (@simplysaru)

    11 years, 12 months ago

    I have been trying to read more about this and figure out what is causing your auto updates to not work, I don’t have anything concrete to suggest yet, but on a different note, it is recommended that you have the security key definitions in your wp-config file. So please add them to the WP setup that is missing the security key.

    Thread Starter cjessing

    (@cjessing)

    11 years, 12 months ago

    Ah! But I have no idea about what security keys are and where to find them. They have appeared by magic i my wp-config – at least one of them 🙂

    Saravanan S, a11n

    (@simplysaru)

    11 years, 12 months ago

    These are not going fix the auto update issue though, but its recommended to have these. You can generate them here. The reason why you are better with them is explained in detail here.

    Thread Starter cjessing

    (@cjessing)

    11 years, 12 months ago

    I hate to admit this but it turns out that I’ve misread the editor my hosting provider uses. My two wp-config files are indeed identical apart from the

    define(‘WP_CACHE’, true);

    (and of course contents of the security keys, db connection details etc.)

    It still does not fix my initial problem about one site not updating.

    Thread Starter cjessing

    (@cjessing)

    11 years, 11 months ago

    Same thing yesterday. About 7 hours ago one site updated automatically to 3.8.3 and sent me an email. The other didn’t. Really annoying. Will give it a day or two before I update it manually.

    Thread Starter cjessing

    (@cjessing)

    11 years, 11 months ago

    Eureka!

    I found a post regarding the automatic update (not the fully automatic one like we have now but the one click version in previous versions – before 3.7).

    The solution there was to delete the “upgrade” folder under “wp-content”, recreate it manually and chmod it to 777.

    I did this and about an hour later I got an email from the site in question that it had automatically upgraded to 3.8.3 🙂

    So now I’m a happy camper 🙂

    Saravanan S, a11n

    (@simplysaru)

    11 years, 11 months ago

    Thanks for sharing the info. Glad that you were able to get it sorted out. Please do mark the thread as resolved.

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)

The topic ‘How to enable automatic update?’ is closed to new replies.