The Problem with WordPress installations is … you can do so many different thing with wordpress that you can never be sure what your page looks like after the next upgrade/update. For this page I use a modified K2 Template which looked pretty much different after the upgrade of the blog-system. Most of the widgets were offline and some other strage things happened. The automated upgrade plugin uses FTP for its file actions – in my case I had no ftp access to my site up (I always use sftp myself) so I had to configure. I ran into some (selfmade) problems with file perms of the ftp user where the plugin wasn´t a great help debugging. Just be sure, that your ftp user has got all the rights he needs to modify your wordpress installation including making + destroying of folders. But if you got everything set up (backup, backup, backup!!! before you do anything backup! including your database! yes! dont forget the database!) it´s a great help in keeping your installation up to date. And as I found out right now it also keeps your pluging up to date. I´m not sure if that is wordpress or the plugin, but outdated plugins got a new *update me now* button next to them.