No Auto-Update Option

5.6.1 is the latest (current) version.

Hence you already have the latest version of WordPress.

Perhaps I’m not understanding your question correctly.

I am on 5.6. It says is “WordPress 5.6.1 is available! Please notify the site administrator.” It won’t let me update to it. I was meaning that until that version, I always got an option to go and update to the latest version. It won’t let me update to 5.6.1 as there’s no update page to go to. I am logged in via the “admin” account, so I’m not sure why it says that.

It sounds like your account may have lost admin privileges for some reason.

If you are not using Multisite, access your database via phpMyAdmin (most hosting providers offer this in your hosting account’s control panel), go to the wp_users table and find the row for your user_login. Note the ID of this row. Now, go to the wp_usermeta table and find the wp_capabilities row for your user_id. Set the value of this row to:

a:1:{s:13:"administrator";b:1;}

In the wp_usermeta table, I went down to the wp_capabilities and there were four rows, the first one had a user_id that matched my id, so I assume that’s the right line. This is what it shows as the value:

a:1:{s:13:”administrator”;b:1;}

That looks like what you wrote, so I assume that’s correct.

Well, that’s weird. Are you sure you’re logged in under that account?

I logged out and re-logged into it, so I’m pretty sure.

In the Users section of your Dashboard, what is the user role listed as next to your username?

I show Administrator, Keymaster.

Are you using any plugins that change user capabilities?

I had BBPress installed, but they never added support for the import of the program I’m currently using, so I deactivated it. I also used Ultimate Member, but their usage instructions are garbage, so I could never get it to work right. I also deactivated it. That said, I had both installed during prior upgrade windows and was able to upgrade the edition then.

That said, I went in to delete any of the deactivated plugins that I haven’t used in awhile and I have no ability to delete them, so my admin abilities are affected.

I went into my files on the site and deleted all the unused plugins manually. I then went into my site’s Plugins and deactivated everything. None of that ended up changing my inability to update, so I’m not sure what else to do.

Is there a way to re-install WordPress on the back end rather than through WordPress itself?

Try downloading WordPress again, access your server via SFTP or FTP, or a file manager in your hosting account’s control panel (consult your hosting provider’s documentation for specifics on these), and delete then replace your copies of everything on the server except the wp-config.php file and the /wp-content/ directory with fresh copies from the download. This will effectively replace all of your core files without damaging your content and settings.

Some uploaders tend to be unreliable when overwriting files, so don’t forget to delete the original files before replacing them.

I tried, but now I can’t seem to stay logged in. I’ll log in, it goes to my dashboard, then I try to go anywhere else, it pops up the password page again and then it won’t let me back in.

Try clearing your browser’s cookies and cache.