WordPress: Plugin Automatic Upgrade
If you’re running a self-hosted WordPress blog and notice you have multiple updates available for your installed plugins, have you ever wondered how it was done? Have you ever wondered if it was safe to allow for the Automatic Upgrade of your plugins? Well, I recently looked through my WordPress plugins that needed to be updated and was a bit hesitant to try it out. Though I bite the bullet and proceeded to update my plugins via their Automatic system. It isn’t as scary as one might think.
WordPress Automatic Plugin Update
The process is a lot easier than I expected, or than it was previously for me anyway. Before, I would download the new plugin, deactivate the old one, upload the new one, and then reactivate the plugin. Never had an issue doing it that way but it was really time consuming having to download the files separately and then upload them to my site. Not to mention having to extract them locally since I do not have shell access currently set up on my site.
The new system (I believe since WordPress version 2.5) allows your WordPress blog to do everything for you. All you need to know is your FTP or sFTP (secure FTP) account information. You should know this if you installed your WordPress files and plugins yourself. If you do not know your FTP or sFTP account information then you will need to get in touch with your web host. FTP is File Transfer Protocol, the ability to upload and download files from a remote location, in general terms.
How To
As I have mentioned, it is really easy to upgrade a plugin. Select the plugin you wish to upgrade and click on the upgrade automatically link that is shown. This will take you to the next screen.
Here you will enter you FTP or sFTP account information. You will need to know your FTP address (typically your domain name), your FTP username and password, and then the connection type which is either FTP or sFTP. Again, you can obtain this information from your Web Host if you current do not know it.
Once you’ve entered all that information and clicked Proceed, it will perform the following actions:
- Attempt to download the latest version of the plugin from WordPress’ plugin repository
- Unpack (or uncompress) the plugin
- Deactivate the current plugin you have installed
- Remove the plugin you currently have installed
- Move the new plugin into the plugin directory
- and then Activates the plugin
If any of the above actions fail during the process, it will inform you what part failed and stop. Your blog will still work as the plugin will be deactivated, so nothing (hopefully) will break. If the plugin was coded properly then there should be no issues with it being deactivated. You can try and repeat the upgrade automatic process again to see if it passes, but if it fails, you will probably have to install the plugin manually.
The Manual Process
The manual process of upgrading a WordPress plugin is pretty much the way I have explained it above. You will just have to physically do more work to get it done.
You will have to:
- Download the latest plugin version
- Uncompress the file (it is usually in ZIP format)
- Deactivate the plugin you currently have on your website (Admin Dashboard->Plugins->Deactivate)
- Upload/Replace the plugin in your wp-content->plugins
- Reactivate the plugin
Again, it is pretty straight forward and just involves you doing more.
So there you have it, a pretty simple way to keep your WordPress blog’s plugins updated. Updating your the plugins on your WordPress blog helps ensure your site runs smoothly without any issues. Updates might also introduce new features or fix broken bits of older plugins. You can usually see what changes have been done to a particular plugin too when you click on the View version **.** Details links that accompanies the automatic upgrade link for each plugin you have installed. The cool feature about this is, it will load the details of the plugin inline with your current window so you will not need to view another webpage.
If you have any questions about updating your WordPress plugin, don’t hesitate to ask!
Since WordPress 2.7, it is also possible to update WP to a new version when released in the same way.
Oh that makes the updating so much easier now too! I’ll look at that next!
Thanks for the tip I will upgrade my WP blog soon.
That’s right updating WP is so easy now. But you need to disable the old plug-in WP updater to make this feature to work properly. It seems that the plug-in is conflicting to the new auto-updating feature of Wordpress.
Yes it was scary but then I realized it’s a strong script. What people just need to do is keep running on the latest version. That would be a thing to be more scared about.
I’ve definitely wondered if it was safe to just click on automatic and let it do it’s thing. I hold my breath every time, waiting for my whole blog to blow up on me! Lol