Social Media Advisors

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How to Keep Your Custom WordPress Site Up To Date

Custom WordPress Sites, Social Media Advisors, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Tutorials / by

Whenever I build a Custom WordPress Site for one of my clients I always show them how to keep all their plugins, theme, and version of WordPress up to date.  It is actually very easy to do, just many don’t take the time to actually do it.  Before I show how you to keep things up to date, I thought I should first explain why it is important to do so.

PlugWhy Update Your Custom WordPress Site?

You may be asking “what does it matter if I keep my plugins, theme & version of WordPress up to date?  The site is running perfectly fine.” Well, there are two main reasons why you need to keep your custom WordPress site up to date.

1.  New Features– By keeping things up to date you are adding new features & functions that the plugin has implemented.  Sometimes this may mean connections to new social networks, or other great features.

2.  Secure & Bug Free- Most of the updates that take place to plugins, themes, & WordPress are done to either fix a bug in the previous version that was discovered or to implement a security patch to keep your custom WordPress site secure from hackers.  While you may think that nobody would want to hack your simple website, they love to prey on anyone they can.

Before Updating Your WordPress Site

Before you even think of beginning the updating process let me give you a few tips.  First and foremost BACKUP! BACKUP! BACKUP!  Did I say it enough?  Backup your site before even looking at the updates available to your site.  The last thing you want to have happen is for you to update a plugin and have your entire site crash.  If you have no backup, you could possibly lose everything you have worked on.

The second tip I would give is look at the update version.  If it is something minor going from like a version 3.1.08 to version 3.1.09 then go ahead & do the update immediately.  It’s a minor change that is fixing that bug or loophole.  But, if it is a major version update like going from version 3.1.09 to 4.0, then you may want to give it a week or so before installing the update.  The reason I make this suggestion is that sometimes when a major update takes place there are some bugs that do not get discovered until thousands of people are using it.  Usually though, the developer gets notified quickly and a patch is sent to fix the problem.  That is why normally when you see a new version of something come out, there is normally new updates that follow fairly quickly fixing any other issues.

How to Update Your Custom WordPress Site

Here’s a quick tutorial walking you through how to update the plugins, theme, and version of your custom WordPress site:

I hope this helps keep your custom WordPress site up to date with the latest!  If you have questions, feel free to ask in the comment section below.

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Comments

  1. Good advice, Jeremy.  Any suggestions on the best way to backup your site?  That might be a good topic for another post.  I know there are a few different ways to backup a WP site.

  2. Excellent question John! I am actually working on that post as we speak! It should be going live in the next few days. I use a plugin that does an automatic backup & emails it to me daily of my site.

    Jer

  3. Jeremy, very timely post as I’ve been looking at all the updates available on my site. I don’t know how to do a backup though, so would appreciate your help. Also, can I change the color on my site easily? Thanks and hope all is well.

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