Auto-Upgrade 1000s of Plugins & Extensions

We’ve already written about automatic updates for Joomla extensions, the step-by-step how-to for enabling extension auto-updates safely, removing fluff files after updates, managing extensions and plugins, and mass upgrading from one dashboard. Here’s how all of that fits together in practice - and why updates are one of the most-used features in the dashboard.

The 48-second film below shows the Updates page doing the extension and plugin side of the job. There are more short films on the videos page.

How do you mass upgrade Joomla and WordPress from one dashboard?

Open Mass Upgrade Sites, tick the out-of-date Joomla or WordPress sites you want, click Upgrade, and go make a coffee.

mySites.guru queues each site, one update at a time per server, downloads the right update package, extracts files on your server, and runs post-install tasks. If you’ve turned on fluff file removal for Joomla, that happens automatically too.

Doesn’t matter if it’s one site or a hundred. Core upgrades stay within the current major series, so a Joomla 5 site is offered the latest 5.x and never a jump to 6. This post sticks to extensions and plugins; for core upgrades, the update queue, snoozing an update and backing up before updating, read the full guide to updating Joomla core, WordPress core, extensions and plugins across all your sites. The bulk update Joomla page has the overview.

How do you enable auto-updates for any Joomla extension?

Any update stream in mySites.guru can be flagged for automatic updates. Say you have Akeeba Backup installed - when a new version comes out, mySites.guru queues the update without you lifting a finger.

You can enable this per site, or flip it on across every site that has a given extension. Works with any Joomla extension, not just Akeeba.

Viewing and Applying WordPress Plugin Updates

Open the Update pane on the Manage Site page and you’ll see every available update for that WordPress (or Joomla) site in one table. Each row shows the installed version, an arrow and the new version, plus a flag such as major where the jump is a major release. Click Update on a row to apply it, or Release notes to read what the developer changed first. Update all applies the lot, and Check for updates re-reads the site. The filter box takes a name, or words like security, major, failed, queued and snoozed. The bell icon at the end of each row snoozes that update for a version, a week, a month or for good, and Update all skips it.

You can see the exact upgrade path before you commit to anything. WordPress runs one update at a time on a site, because each one puts it in maintenance mode, so the rest wait their turn.

Pending updates in the sidebar

The Needs Attention section of the left menu keeps running counts across all your sites, including Core Update Needed and Updates To Do. Quick way to see how much maintenance you’ve got piling up.

Keeping sites current

Between mass upgrades, per-extension auto-updates, and the per-site plugin view, there’s no reason for your sites to fall behind. Keeping everything current also reduces your exposure to known plugin vulnerabilities. You can review the version upgrade path before committing and run post-upgrade cleanup like fluff file removal. For a full walkthrough focused on WordPress, see the guide to bulk updating WordPress sites. To add an extension or plugin that a site does not have yet, install it on many sites at once.

Back up before any upgrade

mySites.guru has built-in support for Akeeba Backup and the All-In-One Migration Plugin (WordPress), so you can take a backup before applying updates - one site or all of them at once.

This is part of our guide to managing CMS updates at scale.