Auto Updates?

@samuel Wood (Otto), Been there, read it, That’s Why I’m Angry.

People, please stop posting useless and pointless links to codex and make.wordpress, they only serve to infuriate those of us who actually know what we are talking about and have good reason to be angry with WP Core for violating our sites.
If you don’t have a clue how WP works, those links should calm you.

I FULLY Understand the problems that can come from not updating, but as a developer I understand all the problems that come with each and every WP Update as do, the now, 600+ people paying me to install the “Disable Auto Update Patch”

@doc-sheldon

A bit dismissive, don’t you think

I’m sorry that you feel that my statement is dismissive, but honestly, I don’t know how any further conversation can help on these forums.

You don’t like auto-updates, so we give you a way to disable it. Simple.

But if you disagree with the core decisions made, then that’s fine and certainly your right to disagree, but what more is there for us to discuss then? I think auto-updates are good and that not offering a checkbox is also good. Maybe you don’t. But in that case, what more is there to meaningfully talk about?

This is a support forum. The best we can do here is offer solutions. When we run out of solutions, then the conversation is kinda over. If this means that you move on to other projects, then I’m sad to see you go, but all I can really say is that we’ll still be here offering help and assistance if you decide to come back.

@samuel Wood (Otto),

“You don’t like auto-updates, so we give you a way to disable it. Simple.”

NO IT IS NOT SIMPLE!
It is only simple to those who code! The average blogger must pay someone to do this for them. The Plugins don’t always work.

Allthough it′s easy to understand why the developers would want that everybody auto updates… this is the worst idea in history. A lot of us make a living out of our wordpress installation and we all know what havoc an update can make. Every professional knows you don’t update right away!!! Why would you do this to us? Why du you want us to look for other solutions? Why would we have to leave this platform? Because every business owner needs to trust their income! We need to update when it’s safe!!!! Not when it pleases the developers! WAKE UP!!!!!!!!!!

@keeperbay

and that’s precisely the part that’s got me scratching my head.

The fact that as it has been said – the dominant user base may be publishers – doesn’t mean that they designed, developed, or implemented their sites – they paid someone to. So when and if the automatic update conflicts with themes or plugins etc and their site breaks – they need to PAY people like US to fix it and in the current economy, that’s very unfair. In fact that’s just unfair.

They will be the people that are hurt the most. That dominant user base. Those that don’t know how to fix it or can’t afford to, or aren’t prepared to for whatever reason. This whole magilla is forcing everyone’s hand and I’m really blown away by the attitude of those that are representing the source of what has been a wonderful, free program, to build CMS sites on.

~Absolute power corrupts absolutely~

#SMH

@samuel wrote:

“If you find it frustrating to have to install a plugin or put an extra define into your wp-config.php file to make WordPress behave in the way you want it to behave, then that is rather a small price to pay for the millions of non-technical users out there who are not presented with screen after screen full of checkboxes that contain, to them, little more than meaningless technical jargon.”

I’d like to stress, again, that my frustration was aimed at the implemtation of this feature which forced me to have to go through all the sites that I maintain and own to ensure that there were no issues following the upgrade. It is a simple cure to implement, and a proverbial 30 second or less task … if you don’t include the time it took to go over the sites for functional issues and the numbers of sites for which this had to be done this time.

“If that’s not acceptable, then we’re kinda done here, you know?”

Honestly, I did feel dismissed by that statement.

Throughout the course of the last 24 hours, I’ve also become frustrated with voluminous justifications about why we more technical people should embrace this new feature. Maybe we are only 1% of the WordPress community but, had it not been for developers like us who chose to embrace the platform by recommending it to our clients, would WordPress have taken off in the way that it has? I’d like to think that our confidence in the WordPress we knew and the direction we saw it going helped to build awareness and acceptance within our respective client bases.

I hope I’m not perceved as being grandiose in that last statement…

WordPress has put a LOT of energy into being seen as something other than a blogging platform. I don’t think it does the platform justice to characterize the user base as being so incapable of understanding risk that the decisions must be taken out of their hands by force.

@samuel also wrote this

“This is a support forum.”

I avoided putting my comment in the support part of the forum intentionally. My thinking, at the time, was that it fit better into Requests and Feedback because my original thoughts on this were more like feedback. I’ve personally endeavored to be part of the solution by answering questions that others asked and offering alternative approaches for folks closer to the inner circle to consider for future enhancements.

Ultimately, I’ve gleaned that the decision has been made and it is cast in concrete. Maybe this part of the forum isn’t really an avenue for members to supply feedback that they can expect will be taken seriously.

You’ll be seeing me “on the other side” soon. It was my plan to be more involved in WordPress core development anyway and this exchange has made that seem more important.

I think we see in this thread the best and the worst in terms of handling feedback and criticism.

I’ve tried to word this carefully, though with a mind to pointing out types of behaviours in terms of responses from WordPress staffers or workers.

I really like what Chip said here:

Personally, I agree with you that WordPress should expose options for ALL automatic updates, without needing to use a Plugin to expose those options. But the core dev team disagrees, so you’ll have to expose (or manage) those options yourself, via the filters provided by core.

After reading a lot of Chip’s comments, he would be someone Id love to sit down and have a beer with. There is one glitch tho. In another thread, Chip admits,if not tacitly, that updating plugins can lag behind WordPress updates. I think he would agree that can lead to problems for users. This has been one of my longstanding complaints about WordPress support relying on third party plugins to fix problems they create–in the user end–with the “upgrades.”

On other than, this statement from Samuel Wood (Otto) Tech Ninja is just offensive:

A person who doesn’t understand the risks of turning such a checkbox off doesn’t really need to be presented with the option to do so.

I just think that is insulting. I am “that” guy, that publisher who has no technical skills with code, unless its laid out clear with screen-shots and bullet-proof instructions. However, that is never justification for taking ownership and responsibility away from me.

But there is a deeper contradiction here which is what Ive been trying to underline from the beginning.

Samuel, you concede that the bulk of your WP users are non-technically adept:

The truth of the matter is that most users of the WordPress software are not developers, nor technical people. They are publishers. People who write blog posts, or content for websites. That’s our core audience here. The feature decisions for WordPress is made with this group in mind, and not necessarily for developers or technical people. . . . then that is rather a small price to pay for the millions of non-technical users out there who are not presented with screen after screen full of checkboxes that contain, to them, little more than meaningless technical jargon.

But then part of the standard reply to push back about “auto updates” has been this sort or response:

[Samuel]The correct way to disable automatic updates is simply to add this to the top of your wp-config.php file: define( ‘WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE’, false );

You want to assume we are all basically dummies with the exception of a few (professional coders), but then when we speak up, you want to “begin” answering us with code and technical jargon that most of us do not understand. Andrew did much the same thing at the beginning of this thread.

For me this typifies my concern with the way WordPress handles negative feedback.

Back to the issue. It is way overdue now that WordPress insert the specific options for automatic updates, just like Windows. As a generic *publisher*, I want the right to control what WordPress imposes upon me. If I can avoid the foolish cosmetic upgrades (like the last one), while accepting necessary security updates, that would be the best of all worlds for me.

Just one last thought, given that WordPress does automatically update the free WordPress blogs, why is not a stretch for me to believe that at some point in the future you would also take it upon yourselves to do complete updates on blogs hosted on private service providers?

Samuel has already laid the foundation for that, given that we non-technical users are all dummies and need to have control taken out of our hands. Perhaps, the rationale will be that given our ignorance, the responsibility for major updates should also be taken out of our hands?

To Keeper and Marj, I just want to know how much you charge?

Thanks to all.

Please try https://directory.codepoet.com/ or https://jobs.wordpress.net/

This topic has now been closed as per the Forum Rules