From: Bob Spies <bob@flyingsealsystems.com>
Date: Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 9:25 AM
Subject: WordPress 5.5 Automatic Updates
To: FSS Website Maintenance Clients
WordPress 5.5, which is scheduled for release on August 11, contains a new feature to enable automatic updating of your website’s theme and plugins. Today the Wordfence organization published an excellent article describing this feature, including the benefits and risks of using it. In a nutshell, the benefit is that your site stays up-to-date, reducing the stability and security issues with out-of-date software. The risk is that, due to the update something goes wrong (because of the update process itself or problems with the new software version), impairing your site or causing it to fail. Please read the linked article for more detail.
If you’re enrolled in my website routine technical maintenance service, I recommend you not enable the new feature. Every week (and more frequently when necessary) I update your theme, plugins, and WordPress itself in a controlled way. If something goes wrong, I’m there to discover and deal with it. Therefore, enabling the new feature exposes you to additional risk without much benefit.
It’s fortunately not a routine occurrence, but periodically I do run into problems with an update where I need to take corrective action (fix something or restore from backup). There are also situations where, due to knowledge of issues or previous experience with a particular theme or plugin, I choose to wait before installing an update.
In some limited situations I may enable auto-update of a plugin for a special reason. For example, auto-update is already enabled for the Wordfence security plugin, as (a) it has a critical real-time role protecting your site from malware, and (b) it has a history of rigorous testing before release.
With respect to WordPress 5.5 itself, I will probably be waiting 1-2 weeks after release before installing it, thus giving time for initial bugs to be worked out.
Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks.
Bob
Bob Spies
Flying Seal Systems
flyingsealsystems.com