Why WordPress updates are so important to keep your website healthy and functional.

It is common knowledge, that personal hygiene is one of the most effective ways to protect yourself (and others) from falling ill. The same is true for your website. It doesn’t matter how it was built, you must keep it clean and fresh inside and out. In this blog post, we will focus on why WordPress updates are so important.

To update or not to update

WordPress is by far the most popular and powerful CMS system currently out there. Nearly 30% of internet users utilise WordPress. If you own a WordPress site and you work on it yourself, you are probably familiar with the updates notifications. Perhaps you have a web developer and you’ve heard them mention it, many times.

So, the question asked by many is: “Should I update my WordPress site?  Is it really necessary?”

Many people and businesses don’t feel it’s important to do the updates. If everything is working fine, why do it? So should you update your WordPress site?

The answer is a simple, resounding YES! Most definitely!

The health risks

Let’s revert to the smelly guy in the room. This guy started out all clean and fresh. However, through neglecting himself and his ‘system’ over time, he has become a health risk, an invitation for germs and gremlins to set in, making him prone to illness.

Having a website that is not regularly updated, is like being this smelly guy. Things around him feel uncomfortable. People take a wide berth around this guy. The people is this case, is Google and other search engines. The germs and gremlins that stumble along are the hackers. Hackers don’t care how busy or quiet your site is. They don’t care who you are, they only see vulnerability and vulnerability equates to opportunity.

This sounds rather glum, but can easily be avoided.

Let’s see what your WordPress site looks like.

Your site is built, using WordPress. It is customized using a theme and plugins. A theme gives it its look and feel and certain important functions and features. Plugins give it extra functionality. This varies for every site.

Developers worldwide contribute to WordPress, its themes and plugins. When they find security vulnerabilities in WordPress, they fix these and release a new version. The same goes for themes and plugins. When new versions are available, we as web designers or website owners get the update notifications. Ignore these at your peril as these are warnings that action is required.  You may still ask why not keep my old version? The problem is that when vulnerability is fixed; the information about the problem becomes public. And then hackers can see exactly where they can target your site. This is pretty easy to avoid with regular updates.

Living in harmony

Another big problem when updates aren’t done regularly, and are overdue, is that when you eventually do update, things start getting glitchy and can even break completely. WordPress, its themes and plugins need to be able to communicate with each other and exist harmoniously. If they conflict with each other, strange things will start happening on your site, certain functions and features won’t appear as before and you will spend hours trying to fix things.

So, the bottom line is…keep your system clean and updated and avoid becoming that smelly guy.

Wondering what to do now?

• We recommend you do updates at least once a month.

• If you haven’t updated your site in a very long time, get a professional team, like Creative Imagineering to handle the big update for you.

• Ask for added security. There are a lot of WordPress security plugins that will provide additional security for your site. Ask your web developer.
• Include it in your hosting if you can. Creative Imagineering offers 3 hosting packages. Our Standard and Pro Packages include WordPress, theme and plugin updates and fixes. Click here to view