The Vital Importance of Keeping Your WordPress Website Up to DateOctober 30th, 2023

Blog Post The Vital Importance of Keeping Your WordPress Website Up to Date Web

In the ever-evolving world of the internet, your website is often the first impression potential customers have of your business. This makes it crucial to maintain a well-functioning and secure website. If your site is built on WordPress, keeping it up to date is not merely a best practice; it’s a necessity. In this blog post, we’ll explore why you should always keep your WordPress website up to date and why you may need the assistance of a professional website management company to help you achieve this.

1. Security Vulnerabilities

WordPress, like any other software, is susceptible to security vulnerabilities. Hackers constantly seek out and exploit these vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access to websites. When you keep your WordPress installation and plugins up to date, you’re essentially closing the doors on potential security breaches. Newer versions often come with security patches and fixes for known vulnerabilities, making it essential for your website’s security.

A professional website management company like RooSites understands these threats and can proactively address them, ensuring your site stays secure and your data remains protected.

2. Performance Enhancements

Speed and performance are critical factors in the success of your website. An outdated WordPress installation, themes, and plugins can slow down your site, resulting in a poor user experience. In a world where attention spans are dwindling, a sluggish website can lead to visitors leaving and not returning.

RooSites has the expertise to optimize your website for speed and performance. We can identify and eliminate bottlenecks, implement the latest technologies, and make sure your site loads quickly, ensuring a smooth user experience.  Remember, Website performance and page speed is a key factor in google rankings.

3. Compatibility with New Technologies

The digital landscape is constantly evolving, with new devices, browsers, and technologies emerging regularly. Outdated WordPress installations and plugins may not be compatible with the latest technologies, causing your website to display incorrectly or not function at all for some users.

By entrusting RooSites to handle your updates, you can rest assured that your website will remain compatible with the latest technologies, ensuring that your audience can access your content without any issues.

4. Improved SEO Ranking

Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for driving organic traffic to your website. Search engines like Google consider website security, speed, and mobile-friendliness as ranking factors. When your WordPress site is up to date, it is more likely to meet these criteria and rank higher in search engine results.

A professional website management company Like RooSites can assist in optimizing your website for SEO by keeping it updated and implementing best practices, helping you attract more organic traffic.

5. Reliable Backup and Recovery

Despite your best efforts, accidents can happen. Whether it’s a user error, a malicious attack, or a server issue, your website data may be at risk. Regularly backing up your website is essential, and keeping your WordPress installation updated can make the backup process smoother.

RooSites  has a robust backup and recovery systems in place. We can ensure your data is regularly and securely backed up, and in case of any issues, we can swiftly recover your website to a stable state. Backup and recovery is one of the most important reasons why keeping your WordPress website up to date is so vital.

Conclusion

In the digital age, your website is a critical asset for your business. Keeping your WordPress website up to date is not just a good practice; it’s a necessity for security, performance, and search engine ranking. While you could manage updates yourself, entrusting a professional website management company like RooSites can save you time, effort, and potential headaches. Our expertise can help you maintain a secure, fast, and well-performing website, allowing you to focus on growing your business while leaving the technical details to the experts. If you have any questions about managing your WordPress website, please contact us, we are happy to help.


Boston Web Developers


 

Updating WordPress & Plugins: BEWAREApril 7th, 2014

beware-wp One of the reasons clients love having a WordPress site is the ability to do a lot of things themselves.  Great, right?  Why then do I preach that you need professional management with WordPress?

Because there are some treacherous roads you need to cross.  Namely, plug-ins and WordPress updates. When you log into your WordPress dashboard you’re typically greeted with what plugins need to be updated and if there is a core WordPress update. Because they’re basically automatic updates you go ahead and do them. 9 out of 10 times this works fine.  The 10th time however you blow away your website entirely or screw up functionality or display.

Here are 3 cases that illustrate my point:

Case number one:
I had a simple WordPress point release. I had done this update to 20 other sites. But on this one site I clicked update and all of a sudden the screen went white. Nothing, zero, zilch, ugatz.  Site was gone. Fortunately, I back up my sites on a regular basis, and in this case had just taken a full backup. Getting it back was not as easy as you might think even with backup plugin. Restore failed. I was forced to FTP the backup files to the site. Luckily this took care of it and the client site was only down for a matter of minutes.  But, imagine Joe client who doesn’t have the skill set nor the ability to get their site back, their business literally could be crippled for days.

Case number two:
I had a notification that an e-commerce client had an update to their UPS plug-in. Seemed like a very simple update, according to the documentation. I made the update, to the site did some testing. It seemed to be okay. But, I was wrong. When you added something to your cart, you got a PHP fatal error. Again, luckily I had just taken a backup and could restore the plug-in to the prior version.  If not, a business which relies almost 100% on their website would have been down. While I am not a genius, I do know how to backup properly and I do know how to restore. And if push came to shove I had the whole site backed up on my server daily. So I could’ve gotten the client back up and running relatively quickly.

Case number three:
I have a client which uses a web calendar. The plug-in update came and again seem pretty minor. Well, this update actually disabled the backend.  You could not get to the dashboard! And now luckily, again I knew what to do and once I disabled the plugin I could go back and grab the backup and again restore the old version. If not, the client would have been out of luck.

Bottom line:
Managing a WordPress site is not as easy as they make it sound. There is a lot of things you need to know in order to keep it running smooth 24/7/365. So make sure you have someone on your side helping you manage your website. That doesn’t mean you can’t do certain tasks yourself and save money. But you need someone in your corner to help you, especially in those times when you have problems. Not to say that that experts don’t have problems as well, we do. But part of being an expert is knowing how to solve those problems which at times can seem insurmountable. If you need help with your website management, please contact us at RooSites. We are happy to help.

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