If you ask any WordPress expert about the best practices to maintain your WordPress site, you will definitely hear “regular updates.” Our company specializes in both WordPress and Drupal, and our experts know firsthand that any CMS updates are vital for a website’s well-being. So it’s time to uncover more details as to why updates are vital for the WordPress core, plugins, and theme on your website. And please remember you can always rely on our WordPress team for updates or any other tasks.
Why update WordPress core, plugins, and themes on your site?
WordPress updates provide for website security
19.5+ million websites across the globe are using WordPress. As is usually the case with such such a popular platform, WordPress is a lucrative target for hackers. They find security holes in WordPress core, plugins, and themes, and immediately try their luck in attacking websites. Dependency injection, cross-site scripting, or malicious redirects are just some of examples of the harm they can do.
According to the infographic by WPBeginner, 83% of hacked WordPress blogs are not upgraded.
Luckily, there is a WordPress Security Team that monitors core vulnerabilities, as well as receives reports about them. They create patches for the WordPress core that make websites secure against attacks. New versions of WordPress often contain security patches, so updates should be applied without delay.
When it comes to 50,000+ plugins and 5,000+ themes listed on wordpress.org, they are maintained and patched by their owners. When WordPress Security Team discovers vulnerabilities in plugins or themes, they contact their owners and work together for creating patches. When there are available plugin and theme updates, this shouldn’t be ignored.
So WordPress updates are one of the strongest security practices, alongside regular site backups, strong password policies, using reputable plugins, and more. This is one of indisputable arguments as to why you should update WordPress core, plugins, and theme.
WordPress updates introduce new features and improvements
CMSs like WordPress are in constant development, and they are enriched with new features after every release that are in line with the latest web trends. They usually add more usability, performance, website administration, and much more.
We recently had an especially remarkable, high-level release — WordPress 5.0. Among its attractive “new arrivals,” there is the innovative Gutenberg editor that enables content editors to create exclusive rich content with theming effects, for which they need no touch of coding. Imagine your competitors already using what you are missing out on!
WordPress updates bring bux fixes
Continuous development means WordPress CMS is like a living organism. No matter how developers strive for perfection, bugs can always be discovered in WordPress plugins and themes. New versions fix the bugs, so you need to apply updates to have a crystal clear and smoothly working website. Updates help you get rid of existing bugs and prevent new ones.
Further reading: Why your website need latest version of WordPress
Entrust your WordPress updates to experts
These are the main reasons why you should update WordPress core, plugins, and theme. Updates should be applied carefully, keeping in mind the compatibility between all website components, the need for reliable backups, and so on.
So it is best to entrust them to WordPress developers who will perform the updates in accordance with the best practices. And, of course, they will handle individual cases — for example, recommend and apply a replacement for the plugins that do not have up-to-date versions, update custom plugins and theme, and so on.
Contact our WordPress team and always stay protected and up-to-date!
