You may also wish to inform your client that the reason for updates is they include security fixes and patches that will only make their site better. Not running updates can have a very negative impact on their site.
I would now like to know if it is easily possible to update wordpress when I only have FTP-access and phpMyAdmin. WordPress has automatic update feature, that will do its best to perform update without you having to upload new version manually. It is not perfect, but it is quite robust and works on most … Read more
Copy the entire site – including the complete wp-content and the data base – to a local server and run a test. There is no other way to know if it works. Usually you can run the automatic upgrade from any version of WordPress. Outdated themes and plugins are not safe.
Are you sure your host has the minimum versions of php and mysql for 3.3.2? They are PHP version 5.2.4 or greater MySQL version 5.0 or greater. And: try renaming the plugins folder to old_plugins and see if admin works.
I had a similar situation with my WordPress install and Softaculous, what I found was that the version it was telling me to install (or upgrade to) was actually a minor version BEHIND the version of WP that was considered to be current at the time. In my situation I simply ignored it and had … Read more
Well, of course, you have a complete and full backup to start – DB and files. Has to be said if this is going to be a complete answer. It is hard to tell quickly what the problem could be when a WP upgrade produces a failure like you describe. Most likely it is the … Read more
Your question is way too broad to answer thoroughly. By far the most common type of issue is a theme/plugin that is incompatible with the new WP version. So you want to check that first. The upgrade from 4.5 to 4.6, for instance, brought more thorough error catching, prompting plugins to stumble over errors that … Read more
This error indicates that your SSL certificate has either expired or is corrupted. I came across this error recently on a local WordPress installation and the solution is as follows: Download the latest cert.pem file from https://curl.haxx.se/docs/caextract.html Save this file (called cacert.pem) in your php installation directory Open php.ini in an editor and search for … Read more
The “autoupdate” value you see there is just a string in the “response” field from the version check API call. It doesn’t determine whether or not your site actually performs an autoupdate. You’ll see that field in every response returned from core version checks. Basically, it’s just saying that a potential autoupdate is available for … Read more
WordPress 4.0 is not a major update, at least referencing the scheme {major}.{minor}.{patch}. However, WordPress version numbering is explained here, and major versions are identified by the first two numbers, e.g. some recent major versions were 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 4.0, and 4.1 coming in December 2014. WordPress noted in the release post, “4.0 is just … Read more