But with self-hosted Wordpress, especially with large number of plugins, you will have to constantly update your Wordpress installation or get hacked and spammed, no?
Yes, but wordpress has implemented its own form of a "cron" which allows it to do self-updates. Basically every request spawns a "cron" request (literally a HTTP request to itself over localhost) to be processed asynchronously if it's been long enough since the last. And since a "proper" wordpress install can self-modify, it can thus self-update.
My knowledge is about 5 years old at this point, but the idea still scares me silly.
My knowledge is about 5 years old at this point, but the idea still scares me silly.