Keep Plugins, Themes, and Core WordPress Up-To-Date
WordPress is a popular and powerful platform for creating and managing websites, blogs, and online stores. That being said, WordPress also needs to be updated regularly to ensure its security, performance, and functionality. Updating WordPress can help you protect your site from hackers, malware, and other threats that exploit outdated or vulnerable software. Updating WordPress can also improve your site’s speed, compatibility, and features by installing the latest versions of themes, plugins, and core files. And updating WordPress can also fix any bugs or errors that might affect your site’s usability or appearance. So keep your site secure, fast, and functional by updating!
Why Update WordPress?
You may face several issues if you don’t update your WordPress website.
Security Risks
Not updating WordPress can make your website vulnerable to security breaches and hacking attempts. Hackers can exploit known vulnerabilities in outdated versions of WordPress to gain unauthorized access to your website.
Compatibility Issues
Themes and plugins that are not updated regularly may not be compatible with the latest version of WordPress. This can cause issues such as broken functionality, errors, or even crashes.
Poor Performance
Outdated versions of WordPress, themes, and plugins can slow down your website’s performance. This can lead to a poor user experience and negatively impact your search engine rankings.
SEO Issues
Search engines prefer websites that are up-to-date and secure. By not updating your website, you may be missing out on potential traffic and revenue.
Missed Features
Updating WordPress core, themes, and plugins can add new features and improve existing ones. By not updating, you may miss out on new features that could enhance your website’s functionality.
How to Update WordPress?
It’s important to always use the latest version of WordPress to make sure your website has the latest security patches, newest features, and the best speed and performance.
The easiest way to stay current is to keep an eye on your WordPress Admin area. Whenever an update for a plugin, theme, or for WordPress itself is available, you will see a notice displayed on the various Admin pages. Once you see that an update is available, there are essentially two ways to upgrade: manual or automatic.
Manual Update
This is my preferred method. Manually upgrading your plugins, themes, and the WordPress core provides a much greater degree of control over the entire process than possible with automatic methods. Maintaining control over the upgrade process is important for plugins that you may have customized, and also for expedient diagnosis and resolution of any issues that may arise.
New versions of plugins often include new files, options settings, or changes to existing settings that may interfere with normal site performance. Further, plugin updates sometimes require complete un-installation of previous versions or even additional steps in order for proper installation to occur. Manually upgrading your plugins eliminates potential problems by giving you full control.
1.
Backup
It’s important to always use the latest version of WordPress to make sure your website has the latest security patches, newest features, and the best speed and performance. However, on rare occasions, updating WordPress or a plugin can break your website Therefore, it’s always a good idea to backup your website before updating it.
If you host with me the backups are automatic as part of the hosting plan. Contact me to request a site restore if you run into any trouble.
If you don't host with me then do yourself a favor and have a backup solution installed and run it before you update. This way, if anything goes wrong during the update process, you can easily restore your website to its previous state.
2.
Update Plugins
Update plugins by going to the Dashboard > Plugins page and clicking on the Update Now button next to each plugin that needs updating.
3.
Update Themes
Update themes by going to the Dashboard > Appearance > Theme page and clicking on the Update Now button on each theme that needs updating.
4.
Update WordPress Core
Update WordPress core by going to the Dashboard > Updates page and clicking on the Update Now button.
5.
Check for Compatibility Issues
Make sure that all of your themes and plugins are compatible with the latest version of WordPress. Perform other updates as needed.
6.
Test Website
Test your website to make sure that everything is working properly.
Automatic Update
A second way to update your site is to set automatic updates. To enable automatic updates...
for themes
On the Appearance Screen, click on a theme thumbnail. Right below the author of the theme, an “Enable auto-updates” action link is available. Click on this action link to enable auto-updates for the specific theme.
Once enabled, auto-updates can be disabled at any time, using the same toggle link. Themes auto-updates have to be enabled/disabled theme by theme.
for plugins
Navigate to Plugins Screen. For each plugin, there is an “Automatic update” column with an action link used to enable/disable auto-updates plugin by plugin.
Plugins auto-updates can be bulk enabled or disabled for several plugin at one time by using the bulk action selector.
for Core WordPress
Navigate to the Dashboard > Updates page where you will be able to set the automatic updates for the WordPress core.
please note
You won't know when updates are applied so visit your site often to see if everything is working properly.
I hope you found this information helpful. I'm available to provide a weekly or monthly update service. Send me an email to start the conversation.
Update Service
Let me help you maintain and update your WordPress website.
Weekly software updates and server maintenance (check for known malware and viruses, blacklisting status, backup, website errors, and malicious code). Monthly report included. Price is $100/month, can cancel at any time.
Monthly software updates and server maintenance (check for known malware and viruses, blacklisting status, backup, website errors, and malicious code). Quarterly report included. Price is $100/quarter, can cancel at any time.