Getting a strange message on websites

I am seeing this as well. How should this be resolved?

I am seeing this as well. How can this be resolved?

Which admin screen are you seeing this on?

I consistently saw it on websites on the screen that shows all the plugins — the message would appear at the top of the screen —

Also I saw it on the Config page for the plugin —

It would appear at the top of the pages

I have ended up just ‘X’ing it out and it is gone — I removed the message because it a couple clients saw it there and it freaked them —- so I just ‘X’ed it on all the sites that I deal with.

I do not think it was just a ‘one-off’ weird thing – because I got rid of it on 8 sites.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by cbconsult. Reason: typo

Very odd. If you see it again, or if someone else is having the issue, can you please share a screenshot?

Ronald —
I had a thought, and am going to make a speculation, that might not mean anything — but maybe the error message was manifested by some interaction with the server setup —

I am wondering this, since the original 9 sites where I ran into the issue and then deleted it (sorry I should have made a screen shot before doing that) —
but all those sites were on SiteGround.

I just took a look at a similar site that is hosted on CloudAccess — and that WP install basically has a similar set of plugins, theme, etc — but interestingly it did not have that error message.

That got me to thinking that given the other sites had all been hosted on SiteGround, perhaps there is a server interaction that is creating that error message.

I do know that SiteGround has this entire proactive deal that goes on where seem to like to make it difficult for anything to block their push to auto-update their users. (I had run into this issue a few versions back when SiteGround completely over-rode my settings on Easy Updates Manager and auto updated, with no regard to my settings. But this weirdness seemed to stop after that one time a few versions back of Easy Updates Manager.)

It would be interesting if you might be able to get a read from your other users who have also seen that error message and find out where they are hosting, and see if there is something connection to where the sites are hosted and where the error message is showing up.

Just a thought — (I know there have been some other recent plugins recently where something, some setting SiteGround had that caused/made the plugin have a bit of weirdness happen, until the plugin developer made some sort of tweak.)

Thank you in advance.

Hi Ronald,
Yes, i can confirm this happens on sites that are hosted on Siteground servers. I clicked away a lot of those messages in the past two weeks and have captured a screenshot. That can be seen here: https://imgur.com/8rC32yp
The real problem is that auto updating is not working for me anymore.
What to do?
Thanks,
Marc

ps. another issue is that the tags in the message are not correctly closed, causing all content after the message to be bold.

Am getting more of the error messages on yet more SiteGround hosted websites — the error message is exactly the one that the user ‘marcbakker84’ referenced with a link above.

Is there a pending fix to be coming ?

@ronalfy; if you need access to Siteground and/or one of the websites that is showing the error. Please let me know.

Hi,

Can someone clarify if they are reporting this as an error because the constant is really *not* set? i.e. Has anyone verified that?

e.g. Install UpdraftPlus, go to the “Advanced Tools” tab, and read/search through the list of constants that are set. Is it there?

David

Is there any forward movement on resolving this issue??
Please advise.

Hi Carolin,

Yes, i contacted SG support. They add a line to wp-config.php that makes it impossible for Easy Updates Manager to perform autoupdates on both core as plugins. They disable this because they have their own tool for updating both WP as plugins (in cPanel). However, currently this functionality is not working for plugin updates.

Long story short; comment out the following line in wp-config.php:

# Disables all core updates. Added by SiteGround Autoupdate:
define( 'WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', false );

like this

# Disables all core updates. Added by SiteGround Autoupdate:
#define( 'WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', false );

That’ll do the trick.

We disable the default WordPress autoupdate functionality because of the SiteGround Autoupdate service. Please, post a ticket in your Help Desk if you want to completely opt out from this. Commenting out that line won’t do the trick…

Hi Hristo,
Commenting out the line is not my solution, it is the solution the help desk gave me last week (ID 3311678). Could you tell us what to do?
Thanks!

Honestly for a lot of users they do not know how to ‘comment out lines in wp-config’ files — even if that were the solution.

Users turn to plugins such as ‘Easy Updates Manager’ because plugins are generally intended to make it easier than either learning how or, taking the time to learn how to delve into code for many issues — (otherwise everyone would just be hand coding all their website needs and not relying on any plugins).

So please let us hope that there is a ‘user-friendly’ solution to this issue that will get rid of this error message.
It continues to crop up on client websites — and frankly it freaks them out.
They have no clue, they think their ‘website is going to fall down or something’ —
and the reality is that the plugin was used to begin with to make it easy for a non-tech savvy client to be able to semi-self-manage their website.

Also it is not a great selling point for using the ISP, when we need to tell a client that this is happening because of a conflict with SiteGround — when in fact the designer may have recommended them to SiteGround in the first place.

So please let us know there is a fix coming that does not include clients needing to comment out lines of code in config files.