HF PanelDocsv1.0.0

WordPress updates

Safe automatic WordPress updates — a backup first, checks after every update, and an automatic rollback when something breaks.

The WordPress updates screen keeps your WordPress sites up to date safely. Before anything changes, the site is backed up; then each update is installed on its own and your pages are checked after every one. When a check fails, the backup is put back and that version is held, so it is skipped next time.

Where: Control Panel › Websites › WordPress updates (also WordPress updates at the top of the WordPress screen)

Your WordPress sites are found by themselves, whether you installed them with the App installer or uploaded them.

Read the overview

Item What it shows
Sites How many WordPress sites your account has.
Updates waiting Updates found by the last check (WordPress itself counts once).
Security problems Known security problems in the WordPress, plugin and theme versions you run.
Automatic How many sites update by themselves.

A red notice such as 1 site has a plugin with a known security problem appears at the top when the last check found one.

The table has one row per site:

Column What it shows
Site The site's folder and address.
WordPress The installed version, and the version it can update to.
Updates Updates waiting, or ✔.
Last update How the last run went — Updated, Rolled back, Failed or Updates waiting — and when. Running while a run is busy, queued while it waits to start.
Security Known security problems, or ✔.
Auto-update Off, Notify only or Automatic, and the time of the next run.

How a safe update works

  1. The site's pages are checked: the home page and up to 4 extra pages you choose. Each check records the answer's status code, whether the page shows a PHP error, whether it has a title, and its size.
  2. A backup of the site's files (without uploads and caches, which updates never touch) and its database is saved in ~/backups/pre-update/. These backups are kept for 7 days.
  3. Each update is installed on its own — WordPress itself first, then plugins, then themes — and the pages are checked again after every one.
  4. If a page gets worse — no answer, an error status where there was none, a PHP error, the title gone, or the page less than half its size — the backup is put back at once and the run ends Rolled back.
  5. The version that broke the site is held: later runs skip it until a newer version comes out.

Note: if your home page already shows an error before the run, nothing is updated and the run ends Failed, so a broken site is never changed further.

Update now

  1. Tick the sites in the table (or the box in the header for all of them).
  2. Click Update selected and confirm.

The runs start in the background; the results show in the table and under Recent updates. Click Check now to look for new updates without changing anything.

Choose a schedule

Click Settings on a site's row, or tick several sites and click Set schedule.

Field What it does
Updates Off — nothing runs by itself. Notify only — the site is checked on its schedule and you are told about waiting updates. Automatic — waiting updates are installed safely on the schedule.
How often Daily or Weekly (choose the Day).
Window starts at The hour the run may start, in the server's time.
Window length (hours) How long the window is (1–12 hours). Each site gets its own minute in the window, so not every site starts at once.
WordPress itself Minor releases only (security and maintenance releases, the default), Every new version, or Never.
Plugins, Themes Whether plugins and themes are updated.

In a site's Settings you can also set:

Field What it does
Extra pages to check Up to 4 paths, one per line, such as /shop/ or /contact/. The home page is always checked.
Never update Items that are never updated, one per line: plugin:<name>, theme:<name> or core:wordpress.

Held after a rollback lists the versions that broke the site, with the reason. Click Try again to let the next run install it again.

Security problems

The Security problems card lists each known problem: the site, the plugin, theme or WordPress version, how serious it is and what it is.

  • Update now appears when a fixed version exists — it runs a safe update of just that item.
  • Deactivate appears for an active plugin with no fix yet — the site keeps working without it, but what the plugin does stops until you turn it back on in WordPress admin.

Emails

After runs that changed something, rolled back or found waiting updates, you get one summary email a day (kind Websites & SSL in your notifications). If a rollback itself fails, you are told at once.