When Did Wordpress Start Auto-Updating Itself?

[OhioTom76]

I just noticed this the other day, I have several test installations of Wordpress on my server for some projects I am working on. Out of the blue I get an email telling me one of them has updated to the latest version of Wordpress. Immediately I am thinking someone somehow got a hold of my login or something like that because I never updated it. Then moments later I get notifications from my other installations as well. 

 

Apparently Wordpress is now just updating on it's own. This is so frustrating considering I may not want to update some live sites if there are some outstanding compatibility issues with my plugins and themes that haven't been worked out yet. 

 

Anyone know how to turn this off?

[Jaypee]

Auto updates are not enabled by default for major releases like 3.7.1 to 3.8 WP versions (as far as I know).  I think the auto-update issue came about in the 3.7 release?  Anyway, I just made 2 Wordpress installations this morning and I did not check the auto-update option so I'm hoping I won't be getting the same problem in the future.

 

Anyway I found this advice on several blog guides:

 

Disable Automatic Updates

To disable automatic updates is easy, open your wp-config.php file and paste the following line in it:

 

1

define( 'AUTOMATIC_UPDATER_DISABLED', true );

 

Once you saved the file, automatic updates will be turned off and you’ll have to manually update your blog again.

 

 

But I hope I won't have to do it in the future as I'm not very knowledgeable with codes and I don't want to mess up any file.