WordPress 3.7 is out, but the team added a naive and misguided change. The core files are now automatically updated whenever a new release is launched. This is great if you use a hosting company where the manually run automatic updates have never failed, but when an update does fail, the entire site can be disabled and a maintenance message displayed on an otherwise blank screen. I have seen that happen several times with clients’ sites.
Here is info about the maintenance message and how to resolve the problem: Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance. Check Back in a Minute.
When this happens, re-running the update rarely works. The only fix is to remove a file named .maintenance that WordPress places in the root directory when it starts an update, and then manually doing the updates via FTP. This is beyond the ability of most WordPress site owners to deal with.
The WordPress team has set up a page with workaround methods for disabling the WordPress 3.7 automatic update feature. Some of the instructions are clear as mud and most are beyond the ability of most WP users to implement.
Enabling or disabling automatic updates needs to be a simple checkbox within the admin area. It looks like several users on the WordPress workaround page are calling for this.
It appears that the easiest way to prevent updates from running automatically is to place the following in the wp-config.php file.
# Disables all core updates: define( 'WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', false );
The biggest problem with the fully automated update feature is that you may never know when an update fails. If you run multiple sites and do not check each site multiple times per day, or an update fails when you are traveling and have no FTP access to the site, it may become a major problem. It looks like they did add a feature to notify the site owner whenever an update is run, which also lets you know if it fails. It will be interesting to see if they enhanced the ability of a site to recover when an update fails. That has been a big problem with some sites ever since the update feature was added to WordPress.
Although this is probably a good solution for most WordPress users, it is not for those who either want to mange their updates manually, or are forced to do so manually to due to a server that has been hardened to prevent attacks. This can prevent automatic updates from completing successfully. We are seeing more an more hosting companies tighten their servers due to the increasing onslaught of attacks on web sites.
Use your best judgement as to whether or not you trust this new feature. I for one do not.