WordPress Toolkit: Smart Updates

Note: The WordPress Toolkit extension is free with our Tera plans, and the Web Pro and the Web Host Plesk editions on a dedicated server or could VM.  It is available for a fee for the Web Admin edition.

Smart Updates

Smart Updates is a premium feature available in WordPress Toolkit 3.x and later. It helps you keep your production websites up-to-date without the risk of breaking your website. Smart Updates analyses the potential consequences of installing updates and advises you whether doing so is safe.

To keep your websites secure, you need to regularly update WordPress: themes, plugins, and core. However, these updates can potentially break you websites. Manual updates require your attention and cannot guarantee that your websites will continue working.

To ensure a WordPress instance is always updated safely without breaking your website, we developed the Smart Updates feature, which does the following:

1. Clones the instance, and then analyses the clone and takes screenshots of the website’s pages (including dynamic content and carousels).
2. Updates the clone, analyses it again, and then takes screenshots of the website’s pages again.
3. Calculates how much the clone visually changed after the update and compares the result with a threshold predefined by you.
4. With manual updates, Smart Updates shows you the “before” and “after” screenshots and the estimation whether it is safe to update or not. Here you can compare the screenshots, confirm whether you believe it is safe to update, and then decide whether to update the production website or not.
5. With automatic updates, Smart Updates automatically updates the production website if the amount of changes does not exceed the threshold. Otherwise the update is not performed. In both cases, you receive an email with the results of analysis and the “before” and “after” screenshots. Same as with manual updates, you are encouraged to confirm whether you believe it is safe to update.
6. Based on your responses, Smart Updates analyzes each update using artificial intelligence.
7. This makes Smart Update better at predicting safe updates and minimizes the possibility of installing updates that can break your website.

Using Smart Updates

Smart Updates is a paid feature, which you buy on a per instance basis. You can use Smart Updates with both manual and automatic updates.

To enable Smart Update:

1. Buy Smart Updates and install the received additional license key. You enable Smart Update separately for each instance.
2. Go to WordPress and choose the instance for which you want to enable Smart Update. On the instance card, click “View” next to “Updates”.
3. Toggle on Smart Update.
4. Click Settings, select the "strict", "recommended", or "tolerant" policy, and then click OK. The chosen policy will determine how much the website can change after the installation of updates for Smart Updates to consider updating safe.

You have enabled Smart Update. Now you can use it with manual or automatic updates.

Note: Smart Update is not an alternative for backups. We recommend that you regularly backup your WordPress instances especially if you use automatic updates.

To use Smart Update manually:

1. Make sure you have enough disk space for a full copy of the instance that you want to update.
2. Select the update you want to install and click Update.
3. Wait while Smart Update clones and analyses your website (this may take some time depending on the size of the website). The analysis is performed in the background, so closing the window will not interrupt the update.
4. When the analysis is finished, you will see a message (like the one below) advising you if the update is considered safe according to the chosen policy.

   

5. Click Compare to see the “before” and “after” screenshots of the different pages of your website. Compare the screenshots, and then click Yes or No next to “Is everything OK on the page”. This will make Smart Update better at predicting safe updates.

   

6. If Smart Update indicates that it is safe to update and the screenshots appear to confirm it, click Apply Updates. Smart Update will update the production instance and delete the clone.

   If you do not want to update the production instance, click Discard.

To use Smart Update automatically:

1. Make sure you have enough disk space for a full copy of the instance that you want to update.
2. When an update is available, Smart Update will clone the instance, update the clone and analyze the clone after update.
3. If the result after update meets the chosen policy, Smart Update automatically updates the production instance. Otherwise, update is not applied. In both cases, you receive the email with the link. Follow the link to open a report with the comparison of “before” and “after” screenshots of your website in a new browser window. Compare the screenshots and then click Yes or No next to “Is everything OK on the page”. This will make Smart Updates better at telling apart and installing safe updates.