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Adam Schweigert, an independent media and technology consultant, has released a plugin called Newspack Plugin Update Checker that enables self-hosted Newspack users to keep their plugins up-to-date. The Newspack project was launched in 2019 by WordPress.com, with support from the Google News Initiative, the Knight Foundation, and The Lenfest Institute. It provides local news organizations a powerful, yet cost effective publishing platform that promotes financial sustainability.
More than 200 news sites are on the hosted version of Newspack, which uses WordPress.com’s cloud platform. Organizations can also host their own Newspack installations independently, which includes a theme, collection of plugins, and blocks. KinshiPress, which publishes news and updates for WordPress publishers, has a guide to self-hosting Newspack that walks through the process of getting set up. It also mentions the drawback of the plugins being hosted on GitHub.
Schweigert’s Newspack Plugin Update Checker solves this problem by using a plugin updater library that checks for updates and lets users know when a new version is available. The notice appears in the dashboard in a similar way to how WordPress.org displays updates.