You may have had your first WordPress website handed over to you from your designer or developer.
They probably told you that you need to keep the site updated – to maintain your WordPress website but what does that really involve?
What Is WordPress Maintenance?
The core WordPress application (AKA WordPress core), can be extended visually by adding themes and functionally by adding plugins.
When there is a bug fix or an enhancement to the WordPress core, a theme or a plugin, the developers will release a new version.
It is highly recommended that you keep your WordPress core, themes and plugins up-to-date with the currently released versions.
This will strengthen your site’s security.
WordPress Security & Vulnerabilities
WordPress is generally very secure, however, if you are not updating WordPress, themes and plugins regularly, hackers can and will find old vulnerabilities, to exploit and gain access to your website.
How Often Should You Maintain WordPress Websites?
This is a great question.
Ideally you should be maintaining your WordPress website by applying core, theme and plugin updates every day.
Of course that can take up a bit of time, especially of the update causes a conflict with another plugin or theme.
At the very least you should be updating your WordPress website every week.
Yes, that can add up to quite a few hours every month, but it needs to be done.
What Happens If Things Go Wrong?
If you have techincal knowlege, you can try to debug the WordPress core, theme or plugin to find out extactly what has gone wrong.
Otherwise, you may have to reach out to your website hosting provider or your initial designer or devloper for help.
If you have a WordPress Site Care Plan with WP Wingman, we’ve probably already identified the issue and applied a fix, before you even realised there wasd an issue!