Why should you keep your WordPress site updated? For many reasons, keeping your WordPress site up to date is essential. This is different from updating the appearance and functionality of your site. A WordPress update is about upgrading your WordPress core, plugins, and themes.
Security
A WordPress update includes bug fixes and security patches that protect your site from malicious hackers that take advantage of vulnerabilities in areas that haven’t been updated. While updating your site won’t make your site bullet-proof, it will undoubtedly make it harder for anyone to break into your site.
Speed
Updates include optimizations that can help increase the speed of your site. This, in turn, helps your usability and, thus, your SEO.
Compatibility
WordPress does an incredible job of keeping up with the latest technology. To reap those benefits, you must keep your site updated. This will ensure your site is compatible with the newest plugins and themes.
Features
New features and functions are added with every update WordPress releases. These improvements can improve your users’ experience. They can also make working on your website much easier for you.
Things to Keep in Mind While Updating Your WordPress Site
Updating your WordPress Site isn’t hard, but there are some things to keep in mind to ensure you don’t lose your content or even break your site.
Always Backup Your Site
If anything goes wrong, you want a backup of your site from which you can restore your site’s content. If your site is hosted with Iceberg Web Design, rest assured that your site is backed-up up automatically every 24 hours.
Learn more about our maintenance and hosting services.
Turn Off Caching
Caching changes how your website works on the back end, so turning any caching plugins off while updating your site is essential.
Update Themes and Plugins
Your WordPress core needs plugins, but so do your plugins and themes. They are easy to update from your WordPress dashboard.
First, you are going to update your version of WordPress (if it is needed). Click on the “ Update Now “ button to edit your PHP.
Next, you will update your plugins. These are easy to find on the left side of the dashboard. If you have plugins that need to be updated, a number in a red circle will indicate this is the case. There are three places this can be found:
Updates (the number will reflect the total number of updates, including themes and plugins)
Plugins (this number will show the number of plugins that need to be updated)
At the very top of the dashboard, next to the site’s name. This is simply a number that indicates the total number of updates.
A Word of Caution
While you can enable auto-updates, this is something we discourage. Updates can go sideways if anything goes wrong.
You can also perform bulk updates by clicking on all the plugins you want to update and then clicking on Update in the bulk-action dropdown. Again, resist the temptation to do this. Any time you save could be lost trying to recover your side due to a bad plugin update.
Instead, update one plugin at a time. That way, if there is a problem, you know which plugin caused it. So, when you restore your site, you can deactivate that plugin.
Turn Caching Back On
Now, turn your caching back on, check your site to see if everything is okay, and since it is up again.
Another Option
The easiest option is to have your site hosted at Iceberg Web Design. We will take care of the updates and maintenance for you! Contact us today!
