Unsure of Core version and date

Hi @pastorcg,

Looking at that output, it appears that something has probably disabled the WordPress core version check, and you would indeed be running WordPress 4.0.1 (Although nothing else on that screenshot can be used to identify the version)

I’d recommend you perform a manual update, alternatively, if you’re running cPanel you may find that it’s disabled the checks (which I think is bad) and you’ll find an update page within cPanel which lets you update WordPress.

If you’d rather track down what has disabled the update checks, I’d look for wp_version_check within your wp-content folder, I expect you’d find a plugin or theme doing something like remove_action( 'wp_version_check', 'wp_version_check' );.

If after performing a manual update (or however you end up fixing this) and want to test to see if you’re getting update notifications or not, you can edit wp-includes/version.php and change the $wp_version = '4.6'; line to an older version such as $wp_version = '4.0'; and upon viewing the Dashboard -> Updates screen you should be prompted to upgrade to 4.6 again. Setting it to an older version in order to test that it can update back to latest again is safe and won’t cause any issues with WordPress.

Thanks for the reply @dion. Not fond of the idea of a manual update unless I must. There are lots of moving parts on this site. I had actually exported it from a server on one hosting service and imported to a server on another hosting service. This might be a milestone event in this issue.

I had seen other forums and threads about control panel code interfering with the checks and I agree that is bad form. I’ve tried several recommended steps to identify my culprit, but without success.

Thank you for the hint about the wp_version_check function. I found one plugin that was referencing it, but it actually seemed to be accurately calling the function. It wasn’t active anyway, so I deleted it. Unfortunately (but expectedly), there was no improvement.

The footer of the Admin page does say that the site is running 4.0.1, but I cannot understand why the update page will not recognize that a newer version is available nor can I figure out the 1970 date stamp issue in the screen shot. I believe that is likely due to a date (stored and retrieved from somewhere) that is pre-1970 and the Unix epoch feature is overriding.

I will try the version.php tweak to see where this goes…

(Several good backups in place) ??

I changed the WP version to 4.0, but it still didn’t see that an update was available. I’ve added two more images, but they probably won’t tell you anything that you didn’t already expect.

Update Tester (to see if I can connect to WP, says yep) — https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8XrHQXQQHoVME10UVJ1R0hxVjQ

Actual WordPress Update page (shows nothing needed) —
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8XrHQXQQHoVbGVfeTBHTHNZb0k

I am definitely not liking the idea of yanking it all down, re-installing from scratch, and re-applying plugins and themes and so on. But… I’m beginning to wonder if it’s my only option to get WP updated. ??

You’ll need to find what is preventing the update notifications from happening, something has disabled them for sure.

A Manual upgrade is NOT reinstalling from scratch and would retain all plugins/themes/settings.
By replacing only the WordPress files (and leaving wp-config.php and wp-content intact) you’ll only upgrade WordPress and not damage the install.

I want to give a very public KUDOS to Dion who has been helping me via this support thread. Not only has he been kind enough to help me here, he has gone above and beyond to chase down the root cause of this particular challenge. It turned out to be a system plugin from the previous hosting service provider (as noted in an earlier post, I had exported the site from there and then imported it on my new hosting provider’s server) that was blocking all core updates and some other important changes.

Dion, you are a stress saver in the most sincere way! THANK YOU!!