Trying to understand the update process for plugins

  • boardboss

    (@boardboss)


    4 months, 1 week ago

    Something is happening that I am trying to understand. For many sites, I have automatic updates for plugins enabled, and I do not understand why the update process seems to be triggered more than once at short intervals.

    Here is an example of what I mean:
    At 10:20 I received this message (I redacted the website name):
    Howdy! Some plugins and themes have automatically updated to their latest versions on your site at []. No further action is needed on your part.
    These plugins are now up to date:
    – Astra Pro (from version 4.11.4 to 4.11.5)

    These themes are now up to date:
    – Astra (from version 4.11.5 to 4.11.6)

    At 10:52 I received this message:
    Howdy! Some plugins have automatically updated to their latest versions on your site at []. No further action is needed on your part.
    These plugins are now up to date:
    – Astra Pro (from version 4.11.5 to 4.11.5)

    What triggers this second message to tell me that an update has occurred for a plugin that was updated about half an hour earlier?

    This happens across multiple sites running on different servers, and with multiple plugins. The interval between the first and second message is sometimes only a few minutes, maybe 10 or so, and never more than approximately 30 minutes.

    Some other plugins that I have noticed exhibit similar behaviour are:
    Cool FormKit for Elementor Forms
    Post SMTP Pro

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • SirLouen

    (@sirlouen)

    4 months, 1 week ago

    Theoretically, plugins only autoupdate twice a day. There is this pseudo trigger in wp-cron.php that triggers the update as soon as someone’s enters your site (unless you go and configure manually the cron following the manual)

    What might have triggered yours? There could be many factors. If your site’s traffic is not too big, the cron even won’t fire until someone comes. If there was a pending trigger event and someone entered, then it could fire, then after the first trigger, if the time comes for the second one, and it happens to also be triggered in a short time spam, both update events could happen back to back.

    My advice is to manually configure the cron system with a true cron event system (check the link). Also, there are a couple of plugins out there to track the cron events fired.

    Thread Starter boardboss

    (@boardboss)

    4 months, 1 week ago

    Thank you for your reply. Traffic should not be an issue on the site in question, as it gets visited around the clock. I installed the Cron Logger plugin, although it has not been updated in 9 months and is untested with the current version of WordPress. It shows two updates pending, which happen to reflect the currently-installed version and the available version update to be the same, and is scheduled for approximately 12 hours from now, so I will see what happens in the morning.

    Again, thank you for the tip about cron logging.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

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