WordPress Too Many Updates

I understand you.
I tried to use multisite but was having problems with a translation plugin and with url of some pages and with the update, removed it.

Try to give your feedback to wordpress developers and community

I’m not sure why this is an issue if you don’t have automatic updates enabled.

Moved to Requests and Feedback forum

If you go to the plugins page you can’t see new revews about the updates? @leaj Inarry

Andrew, with manual updating it is a big issue and that is the point. With multi websites whether it’s 10 or 50 you can spend a lot of time looking after updates. The themes and plugins will often clash after updates seriously. You can’t just run auto updates if you want your websites all working.

you go to the plugins page you can’t see new revews about the updates?

the issue is often compatibility with other plugins or themes.

Oh I meant that you can choose not to update the plugins – that is essentially what you’re looking for if you go for another CMS (otherwise you’ll fall into the same issue).

Hum ok @leaj Inarry

@leaj Well, Most of the time Update fixes bugs/patches even to upkeep the security, why wouldn’t you wanna do that? Plus every software in this world would update and that’s the general norm, Without regular update you might risk your site and what not. I understand you have to dedicate huge amount of time to do that but you’re not alone ??

ashiquzzaman, I understand that the updates are important, that is not the issue. The issue is that this seems to be a bad design flaw in WP. I have used WP for over a decade and I’m now seriously looking at other alternatives as I just don’t have the time to keep up with the numerous updates each week.

Maybe a better system would only require WP to be updated and all the plugins and themes would not need updates and the WP framework updates would take care of any issues. Of course this would mean completely rewriting WP from scratch and it would probably never happen.

Lets look at a few examples.

Lets say you have a WP website, a theme and maybe the default theme, say about 10 plugins. That is 13 items that will need ongoing updates. Now lets say you have 20 websites X 13 = 260 updates needed. Most of those would be updated once a month and often more. So that is a lot of updates you have to constantly keep on top of. I have about 40 websites on WP so you can double that and you get an idea how much of a PITA this is.

In my opinion, WP is fine if you have 1 or 2 blogs but anything more it can be a lot of work.

You need to do it like we do where I work.

Ongoing updates are done in three separate ways:

1. Clients are responsible for all updates, as well as any issues that they cause, for themselves.
2. We will do updates and fix issues on a case-by-case basis and charge for the time taken.
3. We offer a service plan at a fixed monthly cost that allows us to spend the time to update check and backup each site that we have.

At this point we’ve got around 25 or so sites on our maintenance plans, and the income is covering about 1/2 of the wages of a full-time person (junior) to do the work.

The reason that we do it this was is simple. Unless we’re getting paid to look after the sites later on, we can’t afford to do it – as you’ve seen. No one can spend hours updating and checking sites when there’s no income from those sites, and if there is income it needs to make it worth the time that it takes.

From what you have said, it seems like all of the sites ar your own, so it’s you that’s responsible for pretyt much everything. If that’s the case, there’s a few things that you need to keep in mind.

• Running a Network (or multi-site) will cut down yor workload in a huge way. That would let you do central updates for everything at the same time. The only downside to this is themes that have conflicts with plugins.
• If you’re running themes, or plugins, that continually have conflicts with other plugins or themes, you really need to look at alternatives. I won’t use themes or plugins that I know are the acuse of conflicts because, like you, I’m over fixing up sites just because a plugin has gone from version 1.2.3 to 1.2.4.
• You can cut down the amount of plugins that you have. I am still amazed how many sites I see form ohter places that have 15 or 20 plugins when they only need 3 or 4.
• You can put your voice behind the idea to allow automatic updates for themes and plugins as well as core code.

There are also other solutions, to bulk manage multiple wordpress installations.

I knew of Wpremote.com (a website allowing you to enable – or not, you can make exceptions – core, plugins and themes updates for any number of wordpress blogs you like) or JetPack Manage (apparently, the same as Wpremote but from a more trusted website, wordpress.com), but I stumbled on a web page with a list of similar services, some of them paid for, some of them free.
I hope it’s OK to share the link, I’m not affiliated or anything, I view it as a good source to help others save time: https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/managing-multiple-wordpress-sites/

Lastly, although getting it done at first is a bit of a chore (OMG, having to read a whole Codex page – wink), it’s possible to set up a wordpress blog to automatically update everything, including the themes and plugins, as explained here: https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Configuring_Automatic_Background_Updates

I too believe there are too many updates… I am of advanced age and yes, not too interested in codexes or coding. Every time I have to do an update, wordpress crashes for me and the wonderful people at GoDaddy have to fix me up again. I just get grief or snobby comments from the experts at wordpress (high tech knowledge, lousy bedside manner).

Why can’t wordpress put out more robust releases? I get the security thing, but there doesn’t seem to be the user friendly approach available. I had never heard of automatic updates. And if I have to do coding to make it happen, I’m not likely to do it – just clicking on ‘update now’ causes my system to crash…..

Sorry for the rant, I’m just super frustrated…. When I signed up for wordpress it wasn’t clear that one needs to be interested in back end coding to make the thing work, and it needs constant tinkering.

If wordpress crashes with every new update, then the host who installed WordPress for you is to blame, I regret to tell you this, GustyBroad. They’re quite wrong to givem themselves the helpful knight image when they’re only fixing some screwup they did at some point.

You’re not interested in coding… wait, you mean updating one php file to make small updates applied automatically, this too much ?
You mean that installing a plugin to handle itself all the updates, this is too much ?
If so, no worries, pal, the solution is called wordpress.COM where you can stop caring about anything technical yourself.

For reference, we run our own sites here on WordPress, and we update it several times *a day*. It’s quite robust, when you know what you’re doing.

Use solid plugins. Use solid themes. Know how hosting works. Then you won’t really have any problems. If your system breaks because of an update, figure out what caused the breakage, and then either fix or eliminate it.

Automatic updates work great, as long as you’re using a solid foundation and software underneath it. WordPress is robust enough to handle it, so make sure your other components, like the plugins, are robust enough to handle it too.