How your website is kept updated

Your website's plugins are updated automatically every night. You do not need to log in to WordPress and click anything — it is handled for you, with a backup and a safety check around every change.

Why it matters

Out-of-date plugins are one of the most common ways a WordPress website is broken into. Every plugin you install is a piece of software that receives fixes over time, and a site that falls behind on those fixes gradually becomes an easier target.

Keeping on top of that manually is tedious. It means checking for updates, applying them, then hoping nothing on the site has broken. The nightly update service removes that task from your list and adds a safety net that a manual update does not have.

What is updated

Two things are kept current:

Your plugins. The plugins on your site are updated to their latest version overnight.
WordPress itself. WordPress receives its minor and security updates automatically.

How each update is made safe

Every night, the process follows the same order.

A backup of the site is taken first. If the backup cannot be taken, nothing is updated that night. No backup, no changes.
Plugins are updated one at a time. They are never applied in a single batch, so any problem can be traced to a single plugin.
The site is checked after each update. Once a plugin has been updated, the website is checked from outside to make sure it still loads.
Problems are rolled back automatically. If an update causes a problem, it is rolled back. If needed, the whole site is restored from the backup taken before the update.
Repeat failures are held back. A plugin whose update keeps failing is held back until the problem is resolved, rather than being retried night after night.

Note: Because a backup is always taken before anything changes, your site can be returned to the state it was in before the update ran.

Major updates are treated differently

Large plugin updates — major version changes — are not applied straight away. These are the updates most likely to change how a plugin behaves, so they are held back until they have been checked first.

This means a major version may sit for a while before it reaches your site. That is intentional. The smaller, more routine updates continue to be applied nightly in the meantime.

The Updates line on your Website tab

Once your site has been checked at least once, the Website tab shows an Updates line reading:

We keep your site's plugins updated automatically. Last checked … · … updates applied in the last 30 days.

The Last checked part tells you when the service last ran against your site. The count tells you how many updates have actually been applied in the last 30 days. A low number is not a problem — it simply means your plugins were already current.

Why it is always on

Automatic updates cannot be switched off. Keeping plugins updated is one of the most important things you can do for a website's security, and the backup-first process means every update is applied with a safety net already in place.

If you have ever avoided updating a plugin because you were worried it might break something, this is the part that solves it: the check and the rollback happen whether you are watching or not.

Update notices inside WordPress

You may still see update notices inside your WordPress dashboard for a short time after a plugin is first installed. There is nothing for you to do. These are picked up by the nightly update and will clear on their own.

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