Sometimes you will notice the problem with your WordPress Blog Dashboard that it is not showing notification for latest updates related to plugins, themes or even WordPress New Releases after the release. But at the same time your other blogger friend’s dashboard or your second blog’s dashboard is showing notification for updates about same plugin or even WordPress. Don’t be panic, here is the root cause analysis for this issues,
Scenario is explained above now we will dig a bit in WordPress infrastructure and will try to know what is happening behind the scene. There is a table called “wp_options” in your WordPress database where you can find five fields named as “option_id, blog_id, option_name, option_value, autoload”. Now use the search option on phpMyAdmin to find out _transient_update_core or update_core under “option_name” field. Now same way you can find _transient_update_plugins or update_plugins and then _transient_update_themes or update_themes. You have three rows for these three different option_name. Why are we searching for these fields, here is the answer for that.
Actually every wordpress installation is designed in such a way that it will try to find the updates for WordPress new releases, WordPress plugins or themes at interval of 12 Hrs. But that 12 Hrs time is assigned randomly to each installation of wordpress, so your another blog may show updates for plugins, themes or wordpress releases but at the same time one of your blog may show those updates at different time. Here is the excerpt from WordPress FAQ which will clarify you more on this,
If you want your blog to check right now for updates, you can delete the update_core option name record in your wp_options table. Note that plugins and themes each have their own check and update cycle, controlled by the records update_plugins and update_themes, in wp_options.
Back to the point, we found those fields because those fields only hold that cycle values. If you want to get the updates notification right now, then delete the record based on for what you are looking for. Which means, if you need latest update notification for plugins, then delete the row of update_plugins and then do the same accordingly for themes and WordPress Releases.
Now your blog will be notified for updates on real time but that will slow down your wordpress because it will try to receive notification for updates on each login. At least now you can wait for 12 Hrs at max to get the notification on your dashboard or plugins page.