When developing a WordPress website, the focus is always on the design, the content, and the use of the latest, correct techniques. These are, of course, important elements in the setup of a website. However, once the website is built, a shift takes place. Then, the security of your website, updating WordPress, and making daily backups suddenly become the most important elements.
WordPress is an open source CMS, which means that developers not only daily develop new plugins, but also working daily on developing updates for the system in terms of security, speed, and user-friendliness. In this article, I will explain why it is so important to implement those updates in WordPress.
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Outsource WordPress maintenance or do it yourself?
When you log in to your WordPress website, you often see an update listed for WordPress itself and/or a plugin. Updating your website in WordPress seems easy because you only have to click the 'update' button, but is it really that simple, or is it better to outsource it to a specialist?
The goal of updating and maintaining WordPress
Maintenance of WordPress and its associated plugins ensures that your website runs in an environment that is secure, fast, and up-to-date at all times. We therefore always recommend installing released updates.
An unmaintained WordPress website will eventually be used by hackers to send spam into the world using your website as the sender. Hackers can also take your website offline, insert strange characters, or create extra pages advertising products like Viagra. As a company, you naturally do not want this.
Making backups
Suppose, unexpectedly, your website is hacked, it crashes while updating WordPress or a plugin, or you have made a mistake. In such cases, a backup ensures that your website is back online quickly. We therefore recommend making a daily backup of your website. This can be done in various ways within WordPress. However, most people are unaware of this.
That is why we offer you a backup service at Best4u. This way, you can be sure that, should something unexpectedly go wrong, you always have a backup that we can restore for you, so you are back online quickly in emergencies.
Security and monitoring
Keeping your WordPress website up to date is an important first step to strengthening your website's security. In addition, there are many more measures you can take to ensure that malicious actors will not 'abuse' your website. By monitoring your website and performing regular malware scans, you keep a close eye on your website's security.
The costs and time you have to invest in cleaning up your installation after a hacked website are annoying enough, but on top of that, your website could end up on Google's blacklist. As a result, your website becomes practically unfindable on the internet. To prevent this (and to be able to resolve it quickly), monitoring and scanning your website is indispensable.
Risks
Unfortunately, updating WordPress and related elements such as the theme used and installed plugins is not as simple as 'a single click'. Most updates proceed reasonably quickly and smoothly, but things do go wrong regularly. Parts of the website then no longer function optimally, content looks strange, or the website even crashes completely.
This can be partially prevented by using low-quality plugins and themes. However, it is never entirely predictable how a plugin interacts with a theme or with another plugin. It is also a risk to directly update old software that has already skipped several newer versions. Therefore, to recognize these risks of updating WordPress, resolve potential problems, or revert to an older version of the website, some knowledge of CSS, HTML, MySQL, PHP, the administration environment (e.g., DirectAdmin or cPanel), phpMyAdmin, and FTP is required.
Need help?
Do you have questions about maintaining your WordPress installation, or are you curious about what Best4u can do for you in this regard? Feel free to contact us via support@best4u.nl or by calling 0575 512 125 and getting informed.