WordPress Quick Tip: Remove The Dashboard Update Message

Chris Creed / 4th June 2010

WordPress Quick Tip: Remove The Dashboard Update Message WordPress Quick Tip: Remove The Dashboard Update Message

A particularly useful function of WordPress is that it informs you when a new update is available to download. This is displayed at the top of your WordPress admin panel and provides a link to the update page where you can automatically install the new available version.

Updating your WordPress installation is important because the latest version will likely contain security updates and will give you access to any new functionality that has been developed.

However, there are occasions where you might not want this message to displayed – for example, if you’re building a WordPress site for a client, you might want to remove the message to stop them from updating the site themselves.

WordPress update message in the dashboard

This is because sometimes it’s best to initially test the effects of a new WordPress update locally to ensure that it doesn’t cause the site any problems – it’s not unusual to have configuration issues with plugins that cause the website not to display or work properly.

Removing the update message is very straightforward to do – simply add the following lines of code to your functions.php file:

remove_action('wp_version_check', 'wp_version_check');
remove_action('admin_init', '_maybe_update_core');
add_filter('pre_transient_update_core', create_function( '$a', "return null;"));

Then check your WordPress admin panel and you should see that the message has disappeared.

Whilst this removes the update message, please make sure that you still update to the latest version when it becomes available. Not doing so can leave you vulnerable to security risks, so make sure you’re aware of when new versions are released and ensure that you apply the update.

I hope you found this tip helpful – let me know if you have any questions or comments.

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About The Author

Chris Creed

Hi there, I'm Chris and the Founder of Voosh Themes. I've been designing & developing websites for over 10 years and am interested in just about anything related to design. I also have a PhD in Computer Science (with a particular focus on Interaction Design).

3 Comments

  1. July 3rd, 2010 at 1:54 am

    Foolish
    that wont work.
    i uploaded with following chnages, but site displayed an empty page.

    where r u declaring the function remove_action()

    it wont
    it wont work

    • July 26th, 2010 at 10:48 am

      @someone et al

      Add the code to the functions.php file in your theme folder (ie /wp-content/themes/yourtheme/functions.php) and not the functions.php in /wp-includes.

      Works fine then.

      Cheers,
      Andrew

  2. G-STAR01

    September 2nd, 2010 at 12:21 pm

    Tested on wordpress 2.9.2

    open update.php
    /wp-admin/includes/update.php

    Make additional space at around line 325 and add
    add_action( ‘admin_init’, create_function(”, ‘remove_action( \’admin_notices\’, \’update_nag\’, 3 );’) );

    Look at my line 325
    http://pastebin.com/D3SPPCKh

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. June 7th, 2010 at 11:44 am

    [...] WordPress Quick Tip: Remove The Dashboard Update Message [...]

  2. June 15th, 2010 at 8:20 am

    [...] This could be an issue though as the vast majority of clients are unlikely to test anything before upgrading. To address this, you may want to consider altering their WordPress installation so that they can’t see update messages for both the WordPress core and individual plugins (check out this article to find out how to remove the WP dashboard message). [...]

  3. June 30th, 2010 at 4:24 am

    [...] WordPress Quick Tip: Remove The Dashboard Update Message. A particularly useful function of WordPress is that it informs you when a new update is available [...]

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