Always update Premium plugins whilst they are active
Important tip: updating premium plugins
Section titled Important tip: updating premium pluginsHere’s a quick tip that you may not be aware of but can be important.
Avoid updating inactive plugins
Section titled Avoid updating inactive pluginsWhen updating premium plugins (we’re not just talking about UpdraftPlus here, but any and all of them), do not update them whilst they are inactive. This is because, while they are inactive, WordPress will not look for updates in the right place. WordPress relies on them being active to tell it where the right place for updates is. If your premium plugin is inactive, then WordPress will look up for plugins with the same identifier in the WordPress.org free plugins directory… and then merrily replace your premium plugin with something perhaps quite similar, and perhaps completely different (depending on what identifiers that directory is using).
WordPress bug and workaround
Section titled WordPress bug and workaroundThis is a WordPress bug. There’s no way in WordPress for an inactive plugin to indicate to the core of WordPress how it is to be updated. If the WordPress core team doesn’t fix it somehow, we’ll have to see if we can send them a patch ourselves, time-permitting.
What to do if it’s too late
Section titled What to do if it’s too lateIf it’s too late for you, and you’ve already done this, then you’ll need to de-install UpdraftPlus and install it again.
About the author

David Anderson
David is the owner and founder of TeamUpdraft. David released the first version of UpdraftPlus back in 2011. Today, David is still our lead developer, ensuring quality runs through everything we do. David is passionate about quality coding, privacy and doing the right thing by our users and the WordPress community.
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