Plugin Auto-Update Missing In Some Installations

  • Resolved Floris

    (@florismk)


    3 years, 8 months ago

    All my sites (six of them) have succesfully updated to 5.5. In exactly half (3), the Plugin Auto-Update function has shown up. The other three do not display the Enable/Disable auto-updates links, or other UI related to this.

    Five of the six sites are hosted on the same server, with the same PHP and MySQL versions. So I’ve looked at what’s different about these installations:

    Language: set to EN in some, NL in others, but not correlated with the issue.

    Plugins: The simplest site of the five uses a set of plugins that I also use in all the other sites, and this simplest site does not have plugin auto-update.

    Themes: One site has a commercial theme (Avid Magazine), and that site does have plugin auto-updates. The other sites have various Twenty iterations as theme, and of those, only Twenty Ten has plugin auto-updates; the others don’t.

    Child Themes: One site does not have a child theme, but does have plugin auto-updates; the other sites all have child themes, and one of those does have plugin auto-updates, the others don’t.

    WPML: Two of the sites have WPML installed and multi-lingual content. One of those has plugin auto-updates, the other doesn’t. Of the sites without WPML, one does have plugin auto-updates, the others don’t.

    So of the obvious differences between the sites, none correlate with the presence or absense of plugin auto-updates.

    What else could be causing plugin auto-updates to be absent?

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • sharma.atul85

    (@sharmaatul85)

    3 years, 8 months ago

    I am also facing the same issue. I can not see the auto-update feature in plugin and theme section

    Thread Starter Floris

    (@florismk)

    3 years, 7 months ago

    I’ve done an in-depth analysis of the plugin sets on all five sites (one was closed recently). There’s no correlation between the presence of any plugin and the absence of auto-updates. However, bizarrely, there is correlation between the presence of two particular plugins and the presence of auto-updates.

    On the sites where the Popup Maker plugin is present, plugin auto-updates are present and functioning. On the sites where this plugin is absent, plugin auto-updates are missing.

    The same goes for my custom-built ITeach Speech Bubble plugin.

    But of course, that makes no sense at all. How would the presence of an unrelated plugin enable the auto-updates core function? And conversely, how could the absence of a third-party plugin disable auto-updates?

    Thread Starter Floris

    (@florismk)

    3 years, 2 months ago

    Reviving this issue. I’ve taken some time to look into it once more, and have gone as far as disabling all plugins and reverting to Twenty Nineteen on one of the sites where auto-updates are not available. In that vanilla WordPress installation, auto-updates still aren’t available.

    What else could be influencing the presence/absence of auto-updates?

    Thread Starter Floris

    (@florismk)

    3 years, 2 months ago

    Oh, never mind. In all three cases, this snippet was present in wp-config.php:

    /**
 * Turn off automatic updates since these are managed upstream.
 */
define('AUTOMATIC_UPDATER_DISABLED', true);

    Deleting that fixed it. No idea where this originated though…

    • This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Floris.
    Gavin Bloodworth

    (@retrogav)

    3 years, 2 months ago

    @florismk Thanks for providing this information. It has helped me fix the same problem with my companies website. I also had the same define() present in my wp-config.php file which disables the builtin wordpress autoupdater.
    I did some research and found the reason why the plugin auto-update is missing in some installations. And why that “define(‘AUTOMATIC_UPDATER_DISABLED’, true);” is put there.
    The answer is it depends on how you actually installed the wordpress instance in the first place. If you installed it manually, following some documented steps from a page like https://wordpress.org/support/article/how-to-install-wordpress/ you will not have this autoupdater disable defined.
    However, many web hosting companies provide an Application Installer and Software Automation tools as features available in Hosting Manger (cPanel). In my case, I used Installatron to install wordpress on my web server. It was Installatron that placed that autoupdater disable line in wp-config.php. That is because Installatron has its own autoupdate features for wordpress, plugins and themes. Which can be configured as part of Installatron settings. If you want wordpress to take care of these autoupdates instead of Installatron, just delete the line in wp-config.php as advised by Floris. But if you do that, you should also disable all autoupdates in Installatron. Otherwise, there is a chance they both might try and perform an autoupdate at the same time and cause a problem.
    This would also be the case if your web hosting provider has another Application Installer program and you used it (Softaculous, Fantastico, etc).

    Gavin

    Thread Starter Floris

    (@florismk)

    3 years, 2 months ago

    Thanks, @retrogav! I just went into Installatron and disabled plugin auto-updates there, as those are now dealt with by WordPress itself. Do you know how Installatron WordPress and Theme auto-updates relate to the auto-update feature in WordPress?

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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