Drazen

<p>Update Compass is a decision-first WordPress admin plugin that helps you evaluate plugin and theme updates before installing them.</p>
<p>Instead of only showing that an update is available, Update Compass adds a local analysis layer and recommends what to do next based on version changes, compatibility metadata, changelog signals, and release timing.</p>
<p>It keeps the native WordPress update workflow. Updates are still performed through standard WordPress update mechanisms.</p>
<h3>How It Works</h3>
<p>WordPress already detects updates. Update Compass reads that data and adds decision guidance such as:</p>
<ul>
<li>Update Ready</li>
<li>Stage & Test</li>
<li>Watch & Wait</li>
<li>Hold Off</li>
<li>Needs Review</li>
</ul>
<p>Each status includes a short explanation and next-step guidance. For higher-risk updates, users can open status details for deeper analysis and reminder scheduling.</p>
<h3>Key Features</h3>
<ul>
<li>Pre-update risk analysis for plugins and themes</li>
<li>Clear status badges with explanations and next steps</li>
<li>Version jump analysis (major, minor, patch deltas)</li>
<li>WordPress compatibility checks (<code>requires</code> / <code>tested</code>)</li>
<li>Changelog keyword detection (best effort)</li>
<li>Changelog links (WordPress.org modal/external links when available)</li>
<li>Reminder dates for monitoring and re-check workflows</li>
<li>Bulk update selection with caution confirmation for non-ready updates</li>
<li>Local-first workflow, no external account required</li>
</ul>
<h3>Who Is This For</h3>
<ul>
<li>WordPress developers</li>
<li>Agencies maintaining multiple sites</li>
<li>Site owners managing complex plugin/theme stacks</li>
<li>WooCommerce or multilingual sites where update risk is higher</li>
</ul>
<h3>Decision Logic (Summary)</h3>
<p>Update Compass uses local rules to assess update risk, including:</p>
<ul>
<li>Version delta analysis (major/minor/patch jumps)</li>
<li>WordPress compatibility metadata checks</li>
<li>Changelog keyword signals (when changelog text is available)</li>
<li>Release recency and stale-project checks</li>
<li>Changelog availability (flags manual review when missing)</li>
</ul>
<h3>External Services</h3>
<p>Update Compass is local-first and does not require an account.</p>
<p>To improve changelog-based reasoning, it may make server-side requests to publicly available changelog/metadata endpoints when available (for example WordPress.org plugin/theme metadata and changelog pages, or vendor-provided changelog URLs exposed in WordPress update data).</p>
<p>This is best-effort only and used to enrich analysis. Core update detection still relies on WordPress native update transients.</p>


Update Compass

Stop guessing when to update. Analyze plugin and theme updates before installing them with clear status guidance and next steps.

thingsym

<p>WP Auto Updater plugin enables automatic updates of WordPress Core, Themes, Plugins and Translations. Version control of WordPress Core makes automatic update more safely.</p>
<h4>Features</h4>
<ul>
<li>Automatically update WordPress Core</li>
<li>Automatically updates Themes, Plugins and Translations</li>
<li>Set up a schedule automatic updates</li>
<li>Disable automatic updating of each Themes and Plugins</li>
<li>Record update history</li>
<li>Update notification</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Important</strong>: before updating, please back up your database and files.</p>
<p><strong>Note</strong>: WordPress version 5.5 later, The auto-updates have been implemented for the WordPress Core, as well as themes and plugins. If the auto-updates are enabled, the settings for WordPress Core will take priority over WP Auto Updater plugin. This will result in issues such as no updates at all, or not being updated at the scheduled update date and time. To properly control updates, disable all auto-updates include themes and plugins before enable WP Auto Updater plugin. See <a href="https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/plugins-themes-auto-updates/" rel="ugc">Plugin and themes auto-updates</a></p>
<h4>Auto Update Scenario</h4>
<p>First of all, we will make an <strong>Auto Update Scenario</strong> which decide the policy of WordPress automatic updates.</p>
<p>You can choose from the following five automatic updates of WordPress Core.</p>
<ul>
<li>Minor Version Update</li>
<li>Major Version Update</li>
<li>Minor Only Version Update</li>
<li>Previous Generation Version Update</li>
<li>Manual Update</li>
</ul>
<h4>Minor Version Update</h4>
<p><strong>Minor Version Update</strong> enable minor updates. Minor updates is default behavior in WordPress for security updates. The transition of the version number is as follows: update from 4.8 to 4.8.1, 4.8.2 …</p>
<h4>Major Version Update</h4>
<p><strong>Major Version Update</strong> enable major updates. The transition of the version number is as follows: update from 4.7 to 4.8, 4.9 …</p>
<h4>Minor Only Version Update</h4>
<p><strong>Minor Only Version Update</strong> enable major updates and minor updates <strong>except version x.y.0</strong>. It make sense to take a “skip” approach to avoid introducing new vulnerabilities into the latest major version release.</p>
<p>Update the WordPress Core version (eg. x.y.1 or later) with security fixed. Not automatically update the latest major version of x.y.0. The transition of the version number is as follows: update from 4.7.z to 4.8.z, 4.9.z … skiped 4.7.0, 4.8.0, 4.9.0 …</p>
<h4>Previous Generation Version Update</h4>
<p><strong>Previous Generation Version Update</strong> enable major updates and minor updates <strong>except the latest major version</strong>. It make sense to take a “wait and see” approach to ensure the latest major version release is stable before.</p>
<p>With the installed WordPress Core version as 4.6.z. If the latest WordPress Core version released to 4.8.0, automatically update it to version 4.7.z. It will be always automatically updated to the previous generation WordPress Core version with probably security fixed.</p>
<h4>Manual Update</h4>
<p><strong>Manual Update</strong> disable automatic updates. You update WordPress Core manually on the Dashboard Updates Screen.</p>
<p><strong>Automatic updates</strong> and <strong>manual updates</strong> are available for themes, plugins and Translations.<br />
It is also possible to disable automatic updating of each Themes and Plugins.</p>
<h4>Scheduled automatic updates</h4>
<p>Next we will set up a schedule for automatic updates.<br />
The update interval can be selected from the following four.</p>
<ul>
<li>Twice Daily (12 hours interval)</li>
<li>Daily</li>
<li>Weekly</li>
<li>Monthly</li>
</ul>
<p>You can also set the day, the day of the week, the hour and the minute of the Update Date.</p>
<p>At the time of automatic update, Automatically updates WordPress Core, Themes, Plugins and Translations to be updated.</p>
<h4>Support</h4>
<p>If you have any trouble, you can use the forums or report bugs.</p>
<ul>
<li>Forum: <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/wp-auto-updater/" rel="ugc">https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/wp-auto-updater/</a></li>
<li>Issues: <a href="https://github.com/thingsym/wp-auto-updater/issues" rel="nofollow ugc">https://github.com/thingsym/wp-auto-updater/issues</a></li>
</ul>
<h4>Contribution</h4>
<p>Small patches and bug reports can be submitted a issue tracker in Github. Forking on Github is another good way. You can send a pull request.</p>
<p>Translating a plugin takes a lot of time, effort, and patience. I really appreciate the hard work from these contributors.</p>
<p>If you have created or updated your own language pack, you can send gettext PO and MO files to author. I can bundle it into plugin.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://github.com/thingsym/wp-auto-updater" rel="nofollow ugc">VCS – GitHub</a></li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-auto-updater/" rel="ugc">Homepage – WordPress Plugin</a></li>
<li><a href="https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/wp-auto-updater" rel="nofollow ugc">Translate WP Auto Updater into your language.</a></li>
</ul>
<p>You can also contribute by answering issues on the forums.</p>
<ul>
<li>Forum: <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/wp-auto-updater/" rel="ugc">https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/wp-auto-updater/</a></li>
<li>Issues: <a href="https://github.com/thingsym/wp-auto-updater/issues" rel="nofollow ugc">https://github.com/thingsym/wp-auto-updater/issues</a></li>
</ul>
<h4>Contribute guidlines</h4>
<p>If you would like to contribute, here are some notes and guidlines.</p>
<ul>
<li>All development happens on the <strong>develop</strong> branch, so it is always the most up-to-date</li>
<li>The <strong>master</strong> branch only contains tagged releases</li>
<li>If you are going to be submitting a pull request, please submit your pull request to the <strong>develop</strong> branch</li>
<li>See about <a href="https://help.github.com/articles/fork-a-repo/" rel="nofollow ugc">forking</a> and <a href="https://help.github.com/articles/using-pull-requests/" rel="nofollow ugc">pull requests</a></li>
</ul>
<h4>Test Matrix</h4>
<p>For operation compatibility between PHP version and WordPress version, see below <a href="https://github.com/thingsym/wp-auto-updater/actions" rel="nofollow ugc">Github Actions</a>.</p>


WP Auto Updater

No problems.
The option to set a time, also when the interval is a week, is very useful.

Works good


The Schedule updates works better than premium plugin "Easy Update Manager"


Great plugin!!


I'm start using this plugins to all websites I manage.


Works nicely

WP Auto Updater plugin enables automatic updates of WordPress Core, Themes, Plugins and Translations. Version control of WordPress Core makes automati …

Update Compass vs WP Auto Updater