How To Make WordPress Check For Updates Immediately

WordPress automatically checks for plugin, theme and core updates once every 12 hours. This is normally fine, but it can become annoying when you know there’s an important update or bugfix available yet it won’t show up in your Dashboard until the next time WP gets around to checking for it. Of course, you can also install the update(s) manually, but surely that seems like too much work when you should be able to use the one-click upgrade function instead 😛

So I created Force Update Check, a small plugin that gives you the ability to make WP check for plugin, theme and core upgrades immediately. Just install it and go to Plugins -> Check Updates Now whenever you want to run the update check. Alternatively, you can also find it in the list of installed plugin in  the Plugins tab and click the “Run” action link.

Here’s a screenshot of the plugin in action :  Screenshot of the "Force Update Check" plugin

You can click the “Found XYZ updates!” links to go to the appropriate Dashboard tab and view/install the available updates.

Download

force-update-check.zip (2 KB)

Requirements

  • WordPress 2.8+
Related posts :
This entry was posted on Thursday, October 1st, 2009 at 16:08 and is filed under WordPress Development, WordPress Plugins. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

8 Responses to “How To Make WordPress Check For Updates Immediately”

  1. DD32 says:
    October 2, 2009 at 11:59

    Just a quick note here, The Plugin/Theme/Core updates actually check every hour if you’re visiting their page, else every 12 hours.

    (their page = the plugins page, the themes page, or the core update page)

  2. White Shadow says:
    October 2, 2009 at 13:41

    You are correct in regards to the Plugin/Theme pages, seems I missed that when reading the source code in question. However, the core update page checks every time you load it, not every hour (I still included that check in the plugin for completeness).

  3. MK Safi says:
    February 24, 2011 at 09:06

    This seems to be built into the latest version of WP, 3.1. Go to Dashboard menu -> Updates, you’ll find a button “Check Again”

  4. tony says:
    July 26, 2011 at 09:57

    Except that for one of my blogs, the “updates” and “check again” buttons do NOT detect that this installation (WordPress 3.1.2) is not the latest version (which is presently 3.2.1).

    I know I can manually update, but it’s tedious and I’ve already done it once.

    I’d like to know why wordpress 3.1.2 thinks it’s the latest version when it’s clearly not. I have two other blogs on the same server which picked up version 3.2.1 perfectly.

  5. Adam says:
    August 31, 2012 at 20:44

    Went to Dashboard > Updates > “Check Again” button, but that didn’t work.

    This plugin is just what I needed! Thanks!

  6. Cómo forzar la comprobación de actualizaciones de plugins en WordPress says:
    February 5, 2013 at 14:48

    […] Este plugin sirve precisamente para forzar la comprobación de actualizaciones, para no tener que esperar hasta 12 horas a que el sistema haga su siguiente chequeo automático. […]

  7. Raffaele says:
    September 25, 2016 at 22:28

    The plugin doesn’t seem to work in combination with your custom theme_update_manager (under WP version 4.6.1).
    Plugin check is working otherwise fine

  8. Jānis Elsts says:
    September 25, 2016 at 22:44

    Yes, this plugin hasn’t been updated in a while. It might have some compatibility issues.

    Anyway, the plugin is mostly redundant these days. Simply opening Dashboard -> Updates is usually enough to make WordPress check for updates.

Leave a Reply