Update a plugin or theme

The core job of Manage GPL: keep plugins and themes on your WordPress sites up to date. You can update one item at a time from the site's detail page, or use bulk updates for speed. This article covers the one-at-a-time flow.

Triggering an update

1. Open the site in Manage GPL.
2. On the Updates tab, you'll see a list of items with an available update.
3. Click the Update button next to the item.

What happens next

The moment you click Update, Manage GPL:

1. Creates an update job record and marks it queued.
2. Dispatches the job to our queue worker.
3. The worker sends an HMAC-signed batch-update request to your site's connector plugin.
4. The connector downloads the correct version's ZIP (via Manage GPL's signed-token proxy, not directly from GPL Times), runs WordPress's built-in upgrader, and returns the result.
5. Manage GPL updates the job status to success or failed and broadcasts the result to your dashboard.

In practice, most updates complete in 5–15 seconds. You can stay on the page and watch the status change in real time, or navigate elsewhere and check back.

Premium vs free plugins

Free WordPress.org plugins update for everyone, on every plan. Premium plugins from GPL Times require a paid Manage GPL plan (Developer or Agency) — on the Free plan, the Update button on those items shows an upgrade prompt instead.

What's logged

Every update creates an entry in the site's Activity log with:

• Timestamp
• Item type (plugin/theme), slug, version-before, version-after
• Status (success or failed) and any error message
• Who triggered it (user vs. system)

Activity log is retained for 30 days.

When it fails

If the update fails, the error message appears next to the Update button. Common failures:

• Permission denied: the WordPress filesystem isn't writable — usually a permissions misconfiguration.
• Plugin conflict: the new version throws a fatal during activation. The connector's fatal-error handler auto-deactivates the offending plugin so your site doesn't go down.
• Network error: the site couldn't download the ZIP. Retry after a minute.

See When an update fails for a full playbook.

Updating many items at once

For speed, see Bulk-update a plugin across all sites and the cross-site "update all outdated" action.