If It Ain’t Broke, You Should Still Update It
You’ve logged into the admin dashboard of your WordPress site and see that pesky red dot next to your plugins. Your site seems to be running smoothly enough so you wonder if it’s really worth the time and possible headache updating everything. After all, they say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” I’m here to tell you, “If it ain’t broke, you should still update it.” There are several reasons why updating your WordPress core and plugins on a consistent basis will make your life easier in the long run.
1
Security
First among the reasons is security. The only thing worse than your website going down is having your data and that of your users compromised. If malicious parties find a security vulnerability, unfortunately, all of these things could happen. On the bright side of things, there are good guys fighting to protect your site. They’re the WordPress and plugin developers who work to discover and repair those security vulnerabilities. However, if you don’t update your site, you’re not taking advantage of those repairs.
2
Bugs
If there aren’t any security vulnerabilities on your site, there still might be some bugs. While a lot of bugs aren’t as big as a security vulnerability, they can still cause issues or may cause issues down the road. Maybe you’re not using the feature where the bug is located or maybe you’re just not aware of how it’s affecting your site, but fewer bugs are always better than more bugs, period. This is another important benefit of updates, so almost every update will include some bug fixes.
3
Speed & New Features
Speed and new features are the last two significant benefits to keeping your site up to date. As web technologies continue to advance WordPress and plugin developers build bigger, better, and faster things. Your favorite plugin may have a new editing process that makes your life easier. Or maybe WordPress has figured out how to load a resource more efficiently, which could speed up the page loads on your site. There are a lot of ways updates to WordPress and plugins can make visitors’ and admins’ (that’s you) experiences more pleasant. So don’t miss out!
Updating WordPress Yourself vs. Hiring a Pro
So now you’re convinced that keeping your WordPress site up-to-date is worth it, but maybe you’re still worried it will be more than you want to take on. That’s where Torx can help. We’ve performed thousands of updates and have a great process in place to ensure everything runs smoothly. If you’d like to learn more about how we can take this important task off of your plate, please reach out to us!
About the author:
Jonathan Miranda
Web Developer
Jonathan is a Web Developer at Torx. A perfect mix of art and logic, website development is endlessly interesting to him. When he's not busy coding beautiful sites for Torx's clients, he spends his time chasing his son around and watching or reading about sports.