Episode 244: No Auto WordPress Updates Please

---

Show Highlights

In this podcast, Rob Cairns talks about why we should no do auto updates in WordPress.

Show Highlights:

1. Automattic forced a Ninja Forms Update.
2. Why auto updates are a bad idea.
3. Always backup before doing updates.

---

Show Notes

Hey everybody, Rob here again.

In this podcast, I want to talk about automatic updates in WordPress.

And this is a bit of an issue for me as somebody.

Who lives and breathes in the security space?

We recently we had a ninja forms hack and automatic decided to force automatic updates of Ninja forms because of the number of.

Installs running Ninja forms and we saw this recently once before we.

Jetpack and Automattic did the same thing.

The problem I have here from a security standpoint is I like to run backups before I do any types of updates at the server level.

And at a site level.

I do both.

And if not at server level, certainly at the hosting company level.

But anyway.

The point is, I run backups long before I ever do an update.

It’s good practices.

It’s best practices.

If I’ve got clients with mission critical websites.

Sometimes, even if I’m running daily backups, which I do.

That these UM.

Websites could be out of date if there is a problem and if an automatic update goes in, it can sometimes break something and frankly, breaking something is not a good thing.

Then the clients on the phone, the clients not happy.

I’m not happy and so on and so forth.

And there’s a bigger issue, frankly, and that bigger issue is we are working in an open source community.

That means the code and the sites are mine to do with what I want.

So frankly automatics should not be pushing automatic updates on me in an open source community.

I should be able to choose now.

I do agree it’s well intended.

Let’s help people plug their security holes and get them an update.

100

Percent, but there should be in a easy option, without going in and hard coding, which I have done on critical sites to avoid any auto updates.

Automatic please stop forcing automatic updates on the WordPress community and let us manage our own.

Isn’t that the whole reason for open source as well to manage your own?

Just some thoughts.

Don’t force automatic updates.

Rob Karen CEO, chief, trader.

Amazing ideas at stunning digital marketing.

Have a great day.

Bye bye for now.

 

---