WordPress version 3.7 was recently released and the most important feature of this release is the ability for WordPress to upgrade itself to either minor or major future releases. You see, since the inception of WordPress, upgrading to future releases were done manually from the admin portal or SSH terminal. There was no auto update or set it and leave it feature in WordPress.
With version 3.7, you may have to forget about setting reminders to upgrade because WordPress will take care of itself. You don’t have to left a finger anymore after enabling this feature.
Although this is a great idea, some folks are still having hard time understanding the logic behind allowing WordPress to automatically update itself. But for those who really like the idea and want to enable it, continue below.
Our last tutorial on this topic shows you how to enable WordPress to automatically upgrade to minor releases. Minor releases are maintenance updates that get released to fix security vulnerabilities or other issues. For example, if a major WordPress version is labeled 2.8, the first minor update will likely be 2.8.1.
Please read our previous post on enabling WordPress to automatically upgrade to minor releases.
If you want WordPress to also automatically upgrade to major releases, continue below. To make this happen, edit wp-config.php file in root directory of your web server.
Then add the line below just before the last line in the file and save it.
define( 'WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', true );
That’s it! The line above enables WordPress to automatically update itself to all future major releases.
One this to remember is that line above will also enable WordPress to upgrade to nightly builds as well. To disable that, open your theme’s function.php file. This file is mostly in /wp-content/themes/yourtheme/.
Add the below line into the file and save it.
add_filter( 'allow_dev_auto_core_updates', '__return_false' );
This will turn off nightly builds update.
Enjoy!