What, When and Why Should I Update in WordPress?
If you’re a WordPress user you’ve no doubt discovered that when you log in to your website’s dashboard there seems to always be some notice about an update being available for something or other. One of the most frequent questions we get from clients managing their own sites is, “Nothing seems broken, so should I update, or can I just let them ride?” The answer is a definitive, “It depends.” Here’s the scoop on what, when, and why you should update in WordPress.
MUST – SHOULD – WANT
The answer to “should I update” comes in three flavors. MUST is pretty self-explanatory — you must update these, and do so ASAP. The reason is that they are often related to the security of your site. You don’t want to get hacked! The second flavor is SHOULD — these updates are recommended as they are generally good for the health of your website. They often make things easier or faster and fix bugs that are there (even if they aren’t currently affecting your site). The last are those updates that won’t really impact your current site, but ones that you might WANT to update so that you can get the latest bells and whistles.
What to Update
There are three areas to apply the “MUST-SHOULD-WANT” formula to: WordPress, Themes, and Plugins. When an update is available for any of these three items it will display and may be accessed by clicking on the updates icon at the top of your WordPress back-end.
So, how do you know if the update available is a MUST, SHOULD, or WANT to update? The easy response is: just update, that way you’re covered (note the caveats about updating your theme below though). The longer response is that it may take some research to find out for most of the plugins. On the updates page, you may be lucky in that the item needing to be updated states the reason. For example, one of the plugins used on our site had this information in the update plugins section: “Compatibility with WordPress 4.1: 100% (according to its author). Fixes backwards compatibility for add-ons and avoids a Fatal Error. Please upgrade straight to this version before upgrading your add-ons”. However, in the theme section, the only wording was “you have version x installed, update to y”. You can often go to the developer’s website and find detailed information, or as I like to say, “google is your friend”.
In general though, here’s a quick guide to help you understand what, when and why to update in WordPress.
WordPress
WordPress is the development platform and foundation of your website. It takes care of everything from allowing you to edit pages to the final display of the majority of your content.
- For the WordPress core you MUST keep it updated for security reasons. Some WordPress updates are even serious enough to be called a “critical security release”.
- WordPress SHOULD be updated to keep up with bug-fixes. Yes, I know that they may not be readily apparent in your particular installation, but that may change as you use more features, update your theme, or add plugins.
- And the last reason you WANT to update is to get all the new bells and whistles that are continually being added to the core of WordPress.
Themes
The theme is the package that displays your website in a creative and cohesive manner. It’s the part that adds all the colors & fonts, layouts, and even extra functionality to your site. When determining the answer to “should I update?” regarding updating themes there are two caveats (especially the older themes): First, if the files in the theme’s directory have been modified (for example using the WordPress editor) without the use of a “child theme”, all your changes will most likely be lost with a theme update. Second, the new theme version may not be compatible with your version of WordPress.
- Having said that, the MUSTs of should I update have the same rationale as with the WordPress Core. Many themes have intricate coding that sometimes hackers can find a hole to sneak into your site, so keep it updated for security reasons.
- The SHOULDs are even more important as themes make bug fixes to keep up with WordPress version releases and streamline their code to make the theme faster. (Which is good for SEO as well as user-experience.) Again, even if a particular bug is not noticeable currently, it may be in the future.
- The WANTs are often very desirable for their new features. There are many cases where the theme’s developers have added new widgets or forms or some other cool doohickey based on user requests.
Plugins
Plugins are used to add special functionality to your customized website. These can be as important as automatic backups and user forms or simply cool functionality such as adding modals and animation.
- Sometimes the MUSTs are even more critical for plugins because hackers find security holes as more people use them in a huge number of different installations. One of the most popular SEO plugins had a major vulnerability that was discovered in early 2014, but thankfully the plugin developers were on top of it and quickly made an update available which fixed the vulnerability.
- The SHOULDs are almost as important as the MUSTs because as more sites use the plugin, incompatibilities are sent to the developer who makes changes to get rid of these bugs. Although developers spend a lot of effort trouble-shooting the code for their individual plugins, there are literally millions of different WordPress configurations they can’t possibly test. Good plugin developers will be continually updating their plugin versions for compatibility with new WordPress themes and other plugins.
- The WANTs are good from the standpoint that sometimes, the free versions of the plugins acquire some of the paid version’s better settings or features.
One last note of caution. BACK UP FIRST! Sometimes an update doesn’t work with the configuration of your website, and things get messed up. Be prepared, and ready to restore from a backup if you encounter problems.
Of course, if you’re under a monthly maintenance package with us, relax, we’ve got this handled for you and your website will always be updated as needed. Tired of trying to sort through all the updates yourself? Just contact us — we’d be happy to help!