WordPress Auto Updates

Have you tried using the WordPress admin panel to configure your auto-updates? You may have better luck there. It should be found under your “Dashboard > Updates”. If you do not see it there, there is also the option of a plugin to help manage it for you: Automatic Updater for WordPress

Store uploads on an external server?

Your best bet is with a plugin such as WP Offload S3. It will take uploads to the media library and send them over to S3 and switch the URL to point to S3 for you. I have used this with a group of autoscaling servers and it has been working well.

I have include wp-config, should I add global $wpdb also?

If you need a processing endpoint with access to the WordPress API, use the admin_post_ action and eliminate the need to manually include wp-config.php or any other WordPress files. // add for logged-in visitors add_action( ‘admin_post_your_action’, ‘prefix_your_action_function’ ); // for non logged-in visitors add_action( ‘admin_post_nopriv_your_action’, ‘prefix_your_action_function’ ); function prefix_your_action_function() { global $wpdb; // your processing … Read more