Updating WordPress Versions – What’s the “right way” to do it automatically?

Hi – I’m new to these forums but have been using WP for a few years on a number of sites. I hope this doesn’t sound like a rant, but I am extremely frustrated at the inconsistent documentation of how WordPress does (or won’t) automatically update itself.

1. The Codex (at https://codex.wordpress.org/Configuring_Automatic_Background_Updates) says, “… By default, every site has automatic updates enabled for minor core releases and translation files.”

   This is demonstrably false, as two of my seven WP 4.9.8 sites have not automatically updated. The others did automatically update to 4.9.9. I’m not aware of any interesting differences in their underlying configurations.

2. The Codex then goes on to talk about defining ‘WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE’, but none of my sites has that define() present in wp-config.php.
3. There are numerous forum postings (such as “How do you update to 4.9.9 and NOT 5.0.1” at https://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-do-you-update-to-4-9-9-and-not-5-0-1/ ) that seem to offer contradictory advice. (“It should happen automatically…” @sterndata; “you need to define ‘WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE'” from several people; other advice, too…)

My questions:

a) What is the “correct” way to set up a site to so that it’s automatically updated?

b) What would prevent those two sites from updating to 4.9.9 automatically?

Many thanks.

• This topic was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by richbhanover.