Hide WordPress Update Nag Without a Plugin

Posted January 7, 2010 – 20:20 in: Nullamatix, syndicated

For those who don’t know, WordPress 2.9.1 was released a couple days ago. As a result, the “WordPress 2.9.1 is available! Please update now.” nag is plastered at the top of the admin interface. Since installing yet another unnecessary WordPress plug-in for something so simple seems pointless, I came up with a quick and easy to implement WordPress hack. Don’t even bother continuing unless you’re comfortable editing a core WordPress file.

Locating the “hook”

[874][nullamatix.com http]:# grep -lir 'update_nag' wp-admin/
wp-admin/includes/update.php
[875][nullamatix.com http]:# vim wp-admin/includes/update.php

Removing the “hook”

Once update.php is open, find this line (around 135 or so):

add_action( 'admin_notices', 'update_nag', 3 );

Then, just make the line a comment; either of the following will work:

// add_action( 'admin_notices', 'update_nag', 3 );
/* add_action( 'admin_notices', 'update_nag', 3 ); */

Save the changes and check out the admin panel. Ta-da, no more WordPress update nag and we didn’t even have to worry about some silly plug-in…

Wat? No Updates?

Wrong. There are still a number of ways to tell whether or not WordPress needs an update. Here are a few:

Check the footer of the admin interface (Get Version 2.9.1)
Check the “Right Now” box in the admin dashboard
Subscribe to the WordPress “Releases” category RSS feed

WordPress Security Updates Only

Unrelated, but still worth mentioning, Steve Taylor asked the following question on the wp-hackers mailing list today,

I can’t find any information on this, but out of curiosity, is it possible to get *just* security fixes for old WP version? So, say when 3.0 comes out and it jumps up from 2.9.4, would there be a “2.9.5″ for the security fixes? My guess is no, but I thought I’d check.

That is a fantastic idea. On my production Debian servers, *only* the security repos are enabled so *only* the security updates are applied. Why couldn’t this also work for WordPress? For me, updating WordPress is a royal pain in the ass due to the core ~~fixes~~ hacks/edits. As a result, WordPress gets updated once every four or five major releases, with the exception of manually applied security patches (of course). But a security-updates only feature for WordPress? Count me in. Hell, I’ll even help with patching the older branches if necessary.

To some, security patches are more of a concern than a “Trash Can” (wait, wat?) feature for posts/comments. I’ll save that rant for another post. Fckin WordPress trash can, geez…

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