Automatic upgrades on live sites are, we think most people would agree, a Bad Idea. You can’t test them before they go live; they’ll play havoc with your version control system, if you’re using one; and if they fail or screw up, your live site is broken. Bad. Idea.
Enter Staunch. Staunch makes you stick to best practice for upgrades, by preventing even admins and superadmins from running WordPress’s automatic upgrade processes on your live site.
When you want to upgrade WordPress, you can do so on a local or development install of your site; after you’ve tested it and made sure everything’s okay, you can then deploy the site as you usually would — through version control, FTP, or something else.