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manifest / updates / newspack-plugin-update-checker

Newspack Plugin Update Checker WP Registry grade A. No security issues foundWP RegistryNo security issues foundOpen the reportA

WordPress plugin that keeps tabs on updates to Newspack plugins that are only available on Github

★ 11stars
v0.3latest · 28d ago

Install

Download source zip No release zip yet

This is the repository archive. It installs, but the folder name will carry the branch suffix and updates will not flow.

Install straight from GitHub with WP-CLI:

wp plugin install https://github.com/aschweigert/newspack-plugin-update-checker/archive/refs/heads/main.zip
Updates itself. It ships its own updater (Plugin Update Checker), so new versions appear under Dashboard → Updates.

Newspack doesn't list most of their plugins in the wp.org plugin directory so they need to be updated from GitHub.

Fortunately, there's a plugin updater library that can check for updates and let you know when a new version is available.

For the time being this plugin just checks for the most commonly-used Newspack plugins (there are a handful of others but those seemed less essential to keep tabs on):

Installation

You can download the latest release as a zip file from the releases tab here on GitHub.

Rename the file to remove the version number (the file name will become the folder name in your wp-content/plugins directory when WP unzips the file to install it).

Go to the Plugins section of WP Admin, click on "Add New" at the top, upload the zip file, install, activate, and you should be good to go!

You'll know it's working if you see the options to "check for updates" and "enable auto updates" for any of the Newspack plugins you have installed:

plugin-updater

Some Notes

The plugin assumes you have the plugin(s) in folders named using their respective slugs (e.g. wp-content/plugins/newspack-plugin/). If you initially downloaded the plugin(s) from GitHub they may have had the branch name or release tag appended (e.g. wp-content/plugins/newspack-plugin-master/). You'll need to rename the folder if this is the case.

Newspack uses Composer to build the releases for their plugins so a common gotcha is trying to download the Main (or Release) branch directly. Fortunately, this plugin updater library has the option to grab the zip file of the latest tagged release, so that's what it's using to perform the update (which should work just fine).

While the plugin will allow you to enable auto-updates, I'd recommend keeping an eye on the Newspack release notes to make sure you're aware of what's in each release and any potentially breaking changes that could affect your site.

Questions? Comments?

I hope this is helpful. Let me know if you have any questions or run into any issues. The best thing is simply to open a GitHub issue on this repository and I'll get back to you as soon as I can!

Releases

3 releases.

Tag
Published
v0.3 latest
Sep 24, 2026 28d ago
Sep 15, 2026 1mo ago
Oct 24, 2023 3 years ago

These releases are tags only. The author does not attach a packaged zip, so there are no download counts to report.

A grade

Security

Newspack Plugin Update Checker 0.3.0 · audited by WP Registry

No security issues found.

Audited release
0.3.0
Findings
none
Worst severity
—
Content hash
c93b5b8118557bc61fbfc67a…

WP Registry hashes the installable build and reports on that exact bytes-for-bytes copy. Embargoed findings are withheld until they are disclosed, so a clean verdict means nothing public is outstanding. WP Manifest does not audit code itself.