IntoClicks is Phasing Out Managed Updates – Here’s Why, and What You Need to Know

IntoClicks is Phasing Out Managed Updates – Here’s Why, and What You Need to Know

What does “updating WordPress” mean?

If you have a website on WordPress, chances are you’ve heard something about “WordPress and plugin updates.” We wrote a blog post earlier this year about how to update WordPress, and why it matters. In a nutshell, updating your website’s version of WordPress along with any plugins is very important for the security and performance of your website. For more details, please refer to our previous blog post.

As most of our clients have been made aware, we are phasing out our Managed Updates service; the main reason behind this is because in WordPress version 5.6, the WordPress core now supports automatic updates of plugins and themes. That is to say, now you don’t need to add any additional code in order to enable this feature – you can do it right from your WordPress dashboard!

How can I set up my plugins and themes to auto-update?

If you are hosting your WordPress website with us, you don’t need to worry about major WordPress core updates. Since many things could go wrong on a big update like that, we take care of it for you. However, your plugins and themes will still need to be updated. While updating themes and plugins is not required for your website, we highly recommend making sure they are for the reasons mentioned above. Also, if you are hosting with us you can be sure you already have WordPress version 5.6 or higher installed, so you have the freedom to hop in to get your plugins and themes updated any time you wish.

Here’s how to set up your plugins and themes to automatically update!

Log in to your WordPress dashboard of course and navigate to Plugins > Installed plugins.

This page shows you all of your plugins currently installed. Some of them might be deactivated, and this is another high priority recommendation; deactivated plugins can also cause a security risk, so if you have any deactivated plugins on your website that you aren’t using, we strongly suggest deleting them completely. From here, you’ll see a column on the right called “Automatic Updates.” If you were thinking that’s where you turn on automatic updates… you’d be correct! When do you want to come work for us? 😉

WordPress admin area showing the list of plugins installed

WordPress admin area showing the list of plugins installed

 

Simply click the “Enable auto-updates” text to have that plugin automatically update. Pretty easy, right? If you want to enable all of your plugins to automatically update, click the checkbox next to the “Plugin” column to select all your plugins. Then, click the “Bulk actions” dropdown box just above and select “Enable Auto-updates.” Click apply and all of your plugins will be set to automatically update – provided the plugin developer has allowed this feature.

To set up your themes to automatically update, navigate to Appearance > Themes. This will show you a grid of all your installed themes. To help your website performance, we recommend having a maximum of three (3) themes installed: your main theme, your main’s theme child, and a WordPress default theme (such as Twenty Twenty-One). Click on the theme to expand the theme information. You’ll see text that says “Enable auto-updates.” Give that a click and you’re set!

WordPress theme detail including Enabling auto-updates

WordPress theme detail including Enabling auto-updates

 

Please note: some plugins and themes may not offer automatic update capabilities. You’ll have to continue manually updating these.

Can you still help with plugin and theme updates?

Absolutely and we’d love to! You don’t need to spend hours learning web design and the technical nuts and bolts of website hosting or servers, or have a big budget or hire your own web design team to make changes to your site – that’s why we’re here. We’d love to introduce our Total Care maintenance plan in conjunction with our new Website Service Plans!

Our Total Care plan is designed to give you that peace of mind and a quality management experience for years to come. We manage all the technical aspects of your WordPress site and host it on super awesome Google Cloud servers that we custom-tune just for WordPress to make it super fastsecure, and reliable! Our website service plans are designed to help your website grow and change as you do. Whether you need occasional updates or daily updates, we have a service plan designed for you. If you purchase an entire year of a service plan, you’ll receive one month for FREE!

Conclusion

Automatic updates can help keep your WordPress website and your visitors safe, along with improving website performance. By enabling auto-updates, you can make sure your website is always up-to-date and secure, no matter how busy life gets. Normally we’d mention that along with updating WordPress core, plugins, and themes, you should make sure you have backups of your website in case anything goes wrong; since we’re awesome, if your WordPress website is hosted with us it includes daily (and on-demand) updates up to 30 days.

We’d love to be your one-stop-shop for everything relating to your WordPress website! Contact us today for any questions about updating WordPress, our Total Care Plan, and our Website Service Plans.

We can help – we’re IntoClicks.

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