Using WordPress Automatic Plugin Updater

For those who do things the hard way, such as hard coding HTML, PHP, CSS and other scripting, downloading WordPress plugins and installing them manually, there is a better way. One of the things I am very cautious about is entering my website login information into forms that transmit them to other sites.

That means in order to update WordPress plugins, the manual method is to visit your plugins page, look for those with updates available, click the link to the plugin site, click the download button there, unzip the plugin, move it to the WordPress folder, open FTP and upload the new files, go back into WordPress Admin panel, disable the plugin, refresh to make sure the new one was seen, then enable the plugin.

That is how I normally do it. After going through that process many times, it has become easy enough to finish an update within a few minutes. That was until I got bold enough to put my website login into the Automated Plugin Updates form and let the software do all the tedious work.
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Using Firefox, the login information is saved, so all I have to do is select the SSL option, click the Proceed button and wait. For most of the plugins, the updating is painless. For others though, the connection is never made, so I can still satisfy my desire to “kick it old school”.

Plus with the SSL option, my login credentials are encrypted while passing through to the WordPress plugins site. The updates now take even less time so I can get back to researching and writing. Note that this function is in WordPress 2.5+. For those who have not upgraded yet, this is just one of the many options that you are missing out on.