Last week we wrote the Safe Updates announcement and why you should be excited about it. Today I am happy to announce launch of Safe Updates – an automated process that ensures your update of WordPress core, plugins and themes is safer than ever.
Best of all? Safe Updates is completely free for everyone with the premium Backup add-on!
There are many great things you could say about WordPress, but keeping it up to date is not one of them. You have to constantly update your websites, since exploits show up all of the time. At the same time, these updates require verification and tend to break your websites in so many ways. Having to go into each website and test it manually can be time consuming and not very efficient.
With Safe Updates this is no longer the case. With a click of a button you can perform updates on any website and we show you any errors you might have. We check the entire website for any changes, and let you make the decision if you want to accept them or roll back.
Safe Updates is a fantastic new feature that takes the pain out of your update cycles. We built it with the goal of helping you scale updates across dozens of websites. Safe Updates will allow you to:
- Reduce time spent updating stuff
- Increase the success rate
- Troubleshoot issues faster
Here is how to run Safe Updates
Safe Updates runs in 7 automated steps.
When you go to the individual website and have a look at the dashboard, on the Updates widget you will see an additional button “Safe Update“. Select the plugin(s) that you want to run the Safe Update on and by clicking the button you will initiate the first step – creating a restore point for your website.
Step two is sending HTTP requests to the website before the actual update to make sure everything is working smoothly on your website, and step three it creates a before screenshots of your website so that you can make a comparison when the update is complete.
Step four is running the updates. In step 5 we send a HTTP request again to check your website response after the update. Step six we take an after update screenshot of your website, and the final step, step seven is your option to go in and see the screenshot comparison. Screenshot comparison lets you drag the slider across and immediately see any changes to you website.
Safe Update perks and pricing
Safe Updates are just another way that we want to make sure you have the best care for your websites, and keeping your client’s and your own websites protected. I sat down with our head of Engineering, Sergej Grivcov, and asked what he thought. He said,
Our incremental backups have made it possible for us to create this feature, because they only have to detect the changes on your website before running Safe Updates, making the whole process faster and more reliable.
Safe Updates is a free upgrade for everyone with the premium Backup add-on. If you are not using our premium backup solution, and already have a backup set up with someone else, by signing up for our premium backup starting at only $2 you get the Safe Updates feature. We think $2 per website for this feature is definitely worth it!
And if your website is hosted on GoDaddy servers, it’s free since all GoDaddy hosted sites get premium Backup and Uptime Monitor for free!
A few things to remember, for now Safe Updates do not support multisites, and they can be run on individual websites only. But, this is only the beginning of our Safe Updates feature, and like with all of our features we work on improving them and customizing them to best suit your needs.
Next step for Safe Updates
Our next step for this feature is automated/scheduled Safe Updates. Like with our Performance Check and Security Check, you will be able to schedule when you want to perform your Safe Updates.
We are getting one step closer to a perfectly safe way to fully update your website and keep track of any changes post updates – all of this with one click for hundreds of sites.
We think this is the next big thing in WordPress website management, but we want to hear from you. What do you think? Test it and tell us all about it.
Abe
I love this feature 🙂 For now, it seems I can only run the safe update on each individual site. Or, am I missing something here? It would be nice to run the safe updates in the overview area? Right now I need to go to each individual site to run this update. Is this a future enhancement?
Nemanja Aleksic
Yep, the bulk Safe Update from the Overview widget is in plans, and should roll out in the next month or so 🙂
jason
Please consider making a form of this wherein the scanning is performed but we’re simply notified (via Dash and Slack) if the update caused issues. We have backups elsewhere and don’t want to pay a significant increase (percentage-wise) in price just to get this feature. It’s a very cool feature, but not really worth it for those of us that do our backups elsewhere.
Roger Cook
This worked well, until I selected multiple plugins and “update all”. Each time it updated the first plugin only and finished, whilst leaving the plugin overview showing the updates in progress status. Eventually, after a very long time, this times out and you can do the next, I only had three to do and it took ages – apart from the last one, which zoomed through. So it looks like there is an issue with more than one item being selected.
simon
This sounds amazing! Will it be available as a separate addon without having to use the Premium Backup addon?
Nevena Tomovic
Hey Simon,
It comes hand in hand with our backups, as our incremental backups make the Safe Update possible. Think of it this way, you get the very best backup and a safer way to update 🙂
simon
Hi Nevena,
That’s a shame, as I am committed to BackupBuddy Stash Live. However, I completely understand your decision and reasoning. Just a shame I can’t use SafeUpdates as it’s sounds amazing!
erikdblair
I am very pleased with this update. Adding more benefits increases my value perception and brand loyalty. Thank you for constantly raising the bar without raising the rates.
Nevena Tomovic
Thank you and I am glad you like it.
justin.matt.web
Is it wrong that I love you guys more than my motorcycle for all of your hard work? Thank you for this!
Nevena Tomovic
Hahah Justin it’s not wrong, you have a few motorcycle lovers here at ManageWP too including myself. 🙂
Todd
I like the idea here, but at this point I have concerns like others. I need the ability to check at least one different page/url for each plugin. Also some plugins are admin-facing only, but still must be checked. And some plugins effect UI, like menu dropdowns, popups, or toggled areas (like Gravity Forms conditional fields). I’m not sure how screenshots can help with these. Again, I like the general idea here — because WordPress updates are so annoying and time-consuming, due to the risk of compatibility problems — but this Safe Updates would only help if it’s as thorough as I am.
Davide De Maestri
That’s really nice but it doesn’t prevent error caused by plugin updates, do it? What happen if during update a plugin cause a 500 error?
Nevena Tomovic
That’s right we can’t prevent a 500 error, but you can restore your website if one does occur. So we create a restore point right at the start of the Safe Update.
erikdblair
I think the restore feature makes it 100% worth it. We’re going to update the plugins anyway, so it’s nice to be able to go back without the technical hassles of finding the older plugin to restore.
Davide De Maestri
So Nevena, how that works? If I get a 500 error i can simply click “restore” from orion panel and get site working back? That would be awesome!
Nevena Tomovic
Hey Davide,
Yep when you finish the Safe Update if there is an error we will ask you for your FTP credentials and you can restore from there.
Nevena
Davide De Maestri
That’s amazing, i’ll buy premium soon. Thank you for the answer 🙂
Nevena Tomovic
You are welcome Davide!
Paul Kouwen
Love this new feature and for a simple website it is great.
I also would like to point out how to check if the responsiveness of a website is not broken after an update.
Keep up the good work.
Paul
Steven
I would prefer you to allow each site to have a staging and live version so the updates are done on a staging site, manually checked and then rolled out on live once good. Even better would be to allow pointing of just the updates to a local version so they can be put through version control and deployed outside of Manage WP but with the updates still showing within the client reports.
vostrader
Good innovation. It worked great until I hit a 500 error and the site was no longer accessible for the restore and I had to go back to the server and restore from there.
Davide De Maestri
Is there a solution for this? If I grant MySQL and ftp accesses could ManageWP restore even after a 500 error?
Nevena Tomovic
Yes we can. 🙂
karl_s
More fantastic work from ManageWP!
You guys (and gals) keep reinforcing my loyalty with every improvement. Would that other companies did the same!
Thank you. 😀
hr policies and procedures in dubai
Really great post. Now i learn new things in the social media opportunity to growing business. Thanks for this article.
Floyd Bucheit
As a non-technical person – it is too risky for me to make the changes that you suggest to speed-up and streamline our website. Do you have a service or someone you can recommend to help us out? Thanks !
patrick
Floyd, we would be glad to help… patrick@infranet.com
ian
Great first step – look forward to it evolving. As others are saying if you can check multiple URLs (key templates) this would be great.
Also be nice to auto diff the image and then you can highlight the area that has changed.
Donna McMaster
Thanks, Nevena! I’m curious. Your first paragraph says, “We check the entire website for any changes,” but the example only shows the home page. Are there other consistency checks that we’re missing?
Nevena Tomovic
Hey Donna,
Thanks for your question. So we do screenshot only the homepage (for now), also we detect all errors that you would normally see in the top right notification box on your ManageWP dashboard. It’s a start, you will be seeing more page comparisons in the future.
jeffandape
Hugo has a point, predefined pages to compare is a must.
Would like to add this to the main overview as well instead of just individual pages. The purpose of this is to speed up updates and confirming they go well. If we have to perform a “safe” update on each individual site… that defeats the purpose of reducing time if you have a bunch of sites.
Ulrich
This is a nice feature but I feel it is not making use of the full potential.
I think full page screenshots are needed and a way to define a list of additional pages to check too.
Having the screenshot comparison only shown in the notifications is not ideal when working on updating multiple sites at the same time.
me
Agreed, really cool feature however plugins can often be used across the site and leveraged on different pages. I am also curious if this is only taking a screenshot of the top of the page or does it compare the whole homepage including below the fold?
Nevena Tomovic
Below the fold too – you get the whole homepage.
Dean
I love ManageWP.com and I rarely have problems, although I’ve not been able to use the clone feature after several attempts, everything else is brill. I agree with Hugo, if any changes that are made away from the homepage aren’t displayed then this would only be useful for the instant restore. For example I recently updated a testimonial plugin that took down 5 of my websites, after manually checking each one I could see the changes but a screenshot wouldn’t show me this. Great move forward though, I look forward to automating more!! 🙂
Nevena Tomovic
Hey Dean,
Yep I understand exactly what you mean, and I am sorry this happened to you. It’s a great point you make, and we have that already noted as the next step. Keep up the feedback! 🙂
Hugo
Maybe something for the future. The latest WooCommerce (3.0 I believe) update was a big update. Product pages didn’t load on one of my clients websites, after the update. However, with this screenshot feature, it wouldn’t see this change, since it only screenshots the homepage.
Maybe we could add 2-3 web pages in the settings where screenshots should be taken? That way it can become a more reliable feature.
doriansavage89
I agree with Hugo that more pages to compare would be nice.
I would also love to see keywords on multiple pages 🙂
kevindenkers
Great feature. One of the things I like about ManageWP is they never stop improving and innovating their service. Thank you! I agree that being able to view a few other key pages would be helpful here. I look forward to using this feature.
Nevena Tomovic
Hey Hugo,
That is certainly something we plan on doing in the future. Thank you for your feedback!
Chris Edwards
Hugo took the words right out of my mouth. In the settings, we should be able to set up to 5 pages or more to check. That would help as not all plugins affect the homepage.
In addition, would love to see a way for your system to automatically compare the the two images from each page and give a green flag if they are exactly the same and a red flag if the images are not the same. This makes it much easier to do mass updates and easily identify which ones caused issues 🙂
Love this update though, great job.