As you may or may not be aware, one of the big changes with WordPress 3.7 is the auto update feature. Once you have upgraded to 3.7 WordPress will automatically check for changes to the WordPress core, themes and plugins and automatically upgrade the. This is generally a very good idea (the WordPress changes are heavily tested before being released and rarely cause problems) but you may not want this to happen. This article will discuss what you can do if you don’t want auto updates.
You use version control
If WordPress detects a version control system that it recognizes it won’t auto update. WordPress looks for Subversion, Git, Mercurial, and Bazaar. This won’t apply to shared and reseller customers as we don’t offer shell access, but VPS and dedicated server customers may use version control.
Disallow all file changes
You’ll probably never want to use this, but you can use the DISALLOW_FILE_MODS option in your wp-config.php. When this option is enabled plugin and theme install/update is disabled from the WordPress admin area. This setting also disables the plugin and theme editor. If you would want to enable this option, add this line of code to your wp-config.php file:
define( 'DISALLOW_FILE_MODS', true );
Turn off the automatic updates entirely
You probably won’t want to use this either, but you can use the AUTOMATIC_UPDATER_DISABLED option to entirely disable the automatic update system. While this function seems like a good idea if you don’t want automatic updates it also disables the functionality to notify you that there is an update. If you would want to enable this option, add this line of code to your wp-config.php file:
define( 'AUTOMATIC_UPDATER_DISABLED', true );
Disable only core updates
This is the easiest and most flexible way to disable updates. You can use the WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE to disable certain functionality:
# Disables all core updates:
define( 'WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', false );
# Enables all core updates, including minor and major:
define( 'WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', true );
# Enables core updates for minor releases (default):
define( 'WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', 'minor' );
Note: you’ll only want one of the above options.
While we do hope you simply leave the auto update feature enabled in WordPress we hope the options we have given you will allow you to fine tune the updates to your specific requirements.