Automatic Updates on Self-Hosted MainWP

I could be wrong, but when they say “self-hosted,” I took it to mean they were suggesting that you install MainWP on your own domain hosted on your own account with a trusted web host, not a local install as you have done, though your approach may be even more secure.

Take a look at MainWP > Info > Cron Schedules and you can see when the cron jobs are set to run and when they last run.

If you see that they are not running as they should, you might have better luck setting up cron jobs on your MAMP instance to run them instead of using an external entity that may have issues pinging your MAMP server. It will give you a bit more control.

Thank you. My poor english. Self-hosted meant to me hosted by myself, ie a local instance of WordPress as I did, not relying on any hosting provider.

I can tell that all Cron jobs run as they should. This morning however, I did not receive the Daily Digest email, and I notice that automatic updates pointed in yesterday email report have run OK. However no email reporting that all went OK today.

That said, I was testing MainWP appealed by the Dashboard and some fancy features. I have been a ManageWP user for many years. As per my experience ManageWP is ahead of the game regarding the control to schedule updates on a per Child site basis and regarding mail reporting. I just simply want to able to set the day or time myself of when updates need to happen, from within the dashboard and not using a 3rd-party plugin as I can read in some other forums. Sounds an obvious feature, no?

I take the point but I won’t spend time to setup a WP instance hosted with my hosting provider and to see if MainWP really worth the effort. I’ll keep an eye on it anyway.

Hi @tucpakic

As @linux4me2 pointed out, self-hosting in this context means that the MainWP Dashboard is installed and runs on your own website and hosting environment, which grants you full control of MainWP and the related data.

Email deliverability, in general, can be problematic in local host environments, and so can WP Cron.
It’s important to also mention that while MainWP scheduled emails rely on these systems, they are not MainWP-specific.

Typically, local servers are not configured to send emails by default.
Have you tried manually sending test emails from your localhost site?

WP-Cron relies on website traffic to trigger scheduled tasks. In a local environment where there is no external traffic, WP-Cron might not run as expected.
There are plugins available that allow you to view and manage the Cron jobs that are scheduled within your WordPress site. These can be helpful for testing and debugging.

Setting up MainWP in a web-hosted environment is just as easy.
WordPress site where the Dashboard will be installed can be set up on a subdomain, so you wouldn’t need to have any additional expenses in that regard.

Thank you @bojankatusic. I appreciate what you’re saying. I may or may not spend time in setting up a fully web-hosted WP instance for MainWP.

As I said, the main drawback for me and for many users (as seen in other forums) is the lack of possibility to adjust the timing of the scheduled auto updates for Trusted items on a per child site basis. Correct me if I am wrong: this issue/idea has been raised a couple of years ago and it still isn’t in your roadmap (https://feedback.mainwp.com/plugins/roadmap). Asking to use WPCron or similar plugins to handle this expectation is clearly not a correct answer. I want to use MainWP from its Dashboard, full stop. Not experiment things with extra Cron plugins or so. The sites we all manage are live-production clients sites. MainWP force us to autoupdate trusted item on all our child sites in bulk without even being able to set the day/time of the week ourselves. This is a serious concern.

I will continue to test MainWP. At the moment ManageWP, not perfect either, does a better job as far as I am concerned.

Thank you for your understanding.

>As I said, the main drawback for me and for many users (as seen in other forums) is the lack of possibility to adjust the timing of the scheduled auto updates for Trusted items on a per child site basis. Correct me if I am wrong: this issue/idea has been raised a couple of years ago and it still isn’t in your roadmap (https://feedback.mainwp.com/plugins/roadmap).?

Correct – right now, only the frequency of the automatic updates can be set (from once per day to twelve times per day) but not the actual time.

Please feel free to make a suggestion about this on our feedback site. That way, others can vote for it, letting us know which features our users want the most. https://feedback.mainwp.com

>Asking to use WPCron or similar plugins to handle this expectation is clearly not a correct answer. I want to use MainWP from its Dashboard, full stop. Not experiment things with extra Cron plugins or so.?

WP Cron is a core WordPress functionality used for all scheduled actions, so leaning into it for the scheduled MainWP emails makes sense. After all, all other plugins do exactly that.

The suggestion for additional plugins in your case was related to localhost environment. Unfortunately, the specific limitations of WP Cron in a localhost environment is something that WordPress would have to address.

For us, as a self-hosted WordPress solution, it would be unwise to invest into development of alternative methods.

Thanks @bojankatusic. I will not spend more time. If you believe that updating in bulk trusted items for all child sites without any fine control of the scheduler (day of week, frequency, absolute time) is a best practice from a management, operational and security points of view, there’s nothing much I can do for you. It’s somehow pretty obvious to understand. You develop it. We run it and that’s us facing our clients, not you. Please listen to us. Your competitors, although not perfect either, do a better job on this update scheduling feature.

Thank you.