Some in the WordPress community will think I’m completely irresponsible for this, but sometimes I got as long as 72 hours without actually logging in to the admin area of some of my blogs. At the same time, I don’t want to get caught flat-footed if there’s an important upgrade that needs to be applied, especially if it has security implications.
Enter the Upgrade Notification by Email plugin. As the name suggests, the plugin checks periodically to see if there is a new version of WordPress available and, if there is, it sends me an e-mail.
The nice thing is that with this installed on each of my sites, I receive an email from each install which acts as a mini-checklist to ensure I don’t forget to upgrade one of my less active sites.