Can a plugin deactivate itself?

Question

We have a situation where a couple of our longstanding plugins (Google Analytics is one) are currently offering the option to "Activate" them.

This figures, because Google Analytics traffic stopped dead a while back. So it seems as if it did turn itself off. Is this possible?

Can the plugin's original author issue an update or something which causes it to go wrong and deactivate?

Or do we have to assume someone deactivated it by mistake?

Technically speaking, it can but I don't see why someone would build this functionality. — Ashfame, May 3, 2012 at 17:05

SickHippie · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-03 16:07:22Z

4

As far as I know, a plugin can be deactivated in these conditions:

Hopefully someone else will come through and add to this if I missed any.

answered May 3, 2012 at 16:07

SickHippie

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so none of these can happen without human intervention on the part of the website owner, as I read it. unless your (2) failed plugin upgrade can be the result of a scheduled or automatic upgrade.
– hawbsl
May 23, 2012 at 9:29
can the plugin author issue a plugin update (which could fail) unbeknownst to the website owner?
– hawbsl
May 23, 2012 at 9:30
Well, if you're the only one with the capability of updating plugins, then yes - all require human intervention at some point. I'm not aware of any plugins that are able to update themselves, though. Wordpress will check for updates, but AFAIK it's always up to an end user to decide whether or not to run the update. Often when updating plugins, we don't check to see the 'success' or 'failed' message, especially in a bulk update (updating several plugins at once). That would be my first instinct.
– SickHippie
May 23, 2012 at 16:11

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