Secure Your Site: How to Enable WordPress Automatic Updates Quickly and Safely

Keeping WordPress sites up-to-date is one of the simplest yet most effective measures for reducing security risk and ensuring stability. For busy site administrators, automatic updates let you close known vulnerabilities quickly without manual intervention. However, enabling automatic updates requires thoughtful configuration to balance convenience with safety — especially for business sites and development workflows. This article explains how WordPress automatic updates work, when to use them, implementation options (including safe defaults), and practical recommendations for teams that require reliability and control.

How automatic updates work in WordPress

WordPress introduced automatic background updates for core minor releases in version 3.7. Since then the system has expanded to handle major core releases, plugins, and themes via configurable mechanisms. At a high level, updates are performed by the WordPress Update system, which checks the WordPress.org API for available updates and then uses the installed filesystem credentials or available transport method to download and install packages.

Key components and concepts:

• Update checks and transient caching — WordPress regularly queries update endpoints and stores update information in transients to avoid excessive remote requests.
• Automatic background updater — A process triggered by WP-Cron runs the update routine. If WP-Cron is disabled, automatic updates won’t run unless a system cron or external trigger calls wp-cron.php.
• Transport and filesystem method — Updates require file-system access. WP uses methods such as direct (filesystem permissions), FTP/FTPS, or SSH2. The FS_METHOD constant can force a method.
• Filters and constants for control — WordPress exposes constants and filters to enable/disable and fine-tune auto-updates for core, plugins, and themes.

Important configuration points

Common controls include:

• WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE — constant in wp-config.php controlling core updates. Setting to false disables all core auto-updates, 'minor' enables only minor core updates (the default), and true allows all core updates including major releases.
• Filters — add_filter(‘auto_update_plugin’, ‘__return_true’) or add_filter(‘auto_update_theme’, ‘__return_true’) to enable plugin/theme auto-updates programmatically. These are typically placed in a mu-plugin or functions.php for central control.
• Email notifications — WordPress can send update result emails. The filter automatic_updates_send_debug_email controls whether emails are sent on success and failure.
• Error handling — WordPress logs update failures to the debug log when WP_DEBUG and WP_DEBUG_LOG are enabled. You can also hook into update hooks to capture results programmatically.

When to enable automatic updates: practical use cases

Automatic updates are not one-size-fits-all. Choose the level of automation according to the site’s criticality, complexity, and change-control needs.

Recommended default strategy

• Enable automatic minor core updates for virtually all sites. Minor releases often include security patches and bug fixes; letting WordPress apply them reduces exposure to known vulnerabilities.
• Enable automatic updates for selected plugins — for plugins that are small, widely used, and highly maintained (e.g., security, caching, or backups), auto-updates are normally safe. For complex or bespoke plugins, prefer manual updates after testing.
• Use caution with theme auto-updates — if you run a child theme, avoid enabling automatic updates for parent themes without testing, as updates may change templates or assets that affect appearance.

Environments that should avoid broad auto-updates

• Large e-commerce or high-availability sites with custom checkout logic — changes must be validated through QA/staging before deployment.
• Sites integrated with bespoke plugins or heavy customizations — updates could break integrations.
• Sites using git-based deployment pipelines — file changes should be tracked through version control, not applied directly on production.

How to enable automatic updates safely — step-by-step options

Below are pragmatic options for enabling automatic updates while maintaining safety and control.

1. Minimal change: use wp-config.php for core

Add the following to wp-config.php to control core auto-updates. Place it above the “That’s all, stop editing” line.

– Enable minor updates only (recommended):
define(‘WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE’, ‘minor’);

– Enable all core updates (major + minor):
define(‘WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE’, true);

– Disable core auto-updates:
define(‘WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE’, false);

Note: keep minor updates enabled by default for security unless you have a staged QA process.

2. Granular plugin and theme control with filters

To enable plugin or theme automatic updates selectively, add filters in a persistent location such as a must-use plugin (mu-plugin) so updates survive theme changes:

• Enable all plugins: add_filter(‘auto_update_plugin’, ‘__return_true’);
• Enable all themes: add_filter(‘auto_update_theme’, ‘__return_true’);
• Enable specific plugin only: hook into auto_update_plugin and check the plugin file path to return true for selected slugs.

Using mu-plugins is preferable to theme functions.php because mu-plugins run regardless of active theme and are not accidentally disabled.

3. Use WordPress UI for per-plugin/theme updates

Since WordPress 5.5 you can toggle automatic updates per-plugin and per-theme from the Plugins and Themes screens. This is an easy approach for non-technical site owners, though less scalable for multiple sites.

4. Use a server cron and disable WP-Cron for reliability

By default, WP-Cron runs when a visitor loads the site. For reliable scheduled updates on higher-traffic sites, disable WP-Cron and configure a system cron job to call wp-cron.php at defined intervals:

• In wp-config.php: define(‘DISABLE_WP_CRON’, true);
• Add a system cron (example every 15 minutes): /15 * wget -q -O - https://your-site.com/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron >/dev/null 2>&1

This ensures update checks and background tasks run predictably and reduces race conditions.

5. Secure filesystem and authentication for automated installs

Automatic updates require write access to the WordPress files. Best practices:

• Use appropriate file ownership and permissions — web server user should own WordPress files or provide a dedicated deployment user. Avoid 777 permissions.
• If using FTPS/SSH, configure secure credentials and consider using the SSH2 PHP extension to allow secure direct installs.
• Set FS_METHOD only when necessary; for example define('FS_METHOD','direct'); if the server user owns files. Otherwise prefer SSH/FTPS for shared hosting.

6. Pre- and post-update safeguards

Implement these to minimize rollback risk:

• Automatic backups/snapshots — take a database and file snapshot before updates. On VPS or cloud instances you can use filesystem snapshots for fast rollback.
• Health checks and alerts — configure monitoring to detect site errors after updates and send alerts to admins.
• Staging for major updates — route automatic major core updates through a staging environment and only enable auto-updates to production after proven stability.
• Rollback tools — have a tested rollback procedure: restore snapshot, restore DB backup, or use plugins such as WP Rollback for plugin-level reversion when needed.

Automation tooling and enterprise workflows

For agencies and enterprises, manual toggles are insufficient. Consider these professional approaches:

• Centralized management platforms — tools like ManageWP, MainWP, and other managed WordPress consoles provide fine-grained automation policies, staging integrations, and scheduled updates across multiple sites.
• Deployment pipelines — use git, CI/CD, and artifact deployment for controlled release cycles. On such setups, you typically disable in-place auto-updates and apply updates through the pipeline after passing tests.
• WP-CLI and scripted updates — use WP-CLI for scripted, logged updates as part of cron or CI. WP-CLI lets you run update commands non-interactively and capture output for auditing.
• System-level backup and snapshot automation — on VPS instances automate pre-update snapshots so you can revert quickly without relying on plugin backups.

Risks, trade-offs and final recommendations

Automatic updates dramatically reduce exposure windows for disclosed vulnerabilities, but they also introduce the potential for regressions. The right balance depends on business needs:

• Security-focused sites — enable automatic minor core updates and auto-update for critical security plugins; ensure automated backups and monitoring are in place.
• High-traffic/transactional sites — prefer staged updates, run update jobs through CI/CD, and keep automated minor security patches for core with a conservative policy on plugins/themes.
• Multiple sites and agency workflows — centralize management, automate pre-update snapshots on your VPS or cloud provider, and use a dashboard for scheduling updates after testing.

Summary

Automatic updates are a powerful tool for keeping WordPress secure, but they should be implemented with operational controls: keep minor core updates enabled, selectively enable plugin/theme auto-updates, use mu-plugins or management tools for consistent policies, replace WP-Cron with a system cron for reliability, and automate backups and monitoring so you can detect and recover from issues quickly. For teams that need deterministic deployment, integrate updates into your CI/CD pipeline or staging workflow.

If you host on your own VPS, consider a provider that makes snapshots and staging simple so you can enable automated updates with confidence. For example, VPS.DO offers tailored VPS plans in the USA that make it easy to create snapshots, manage secure access, and run scheduled tasks — see USA VPS for more details: https://vps.do/usa/.