Why is updating your website so important?

We understand your hesitation to update your website. Breaking your website is a legitimate fear. But not updating is far worse.

In this article, we answer your questions:

1. Why should a website be updated?
   
2. How do I know when my website needs updating?
   
3. Will updating break my site?
   
4. Why does updating cause errors or break the site?

Why should a website be updated?

Web development is in constant change and improvement. It is amazing how (web) technology can change within a year or less. These days, a website developed 2 years ago, is considered outdated. However, style and looks are not the biggest issue, the biggest caveat is security (and corporate image reputation):

The main reason to keep websites updated is for security. Often security vulnerabilities are corrected with new version releases. Updating to the newest version will ensure that you have the latest security fix. 

Not updating your version may leave your site open to hackers. They usually hack websites mostly for planting spam, phishing attacks, illegal content, or redirection to other (mostly illegal) websites. Imagine your customers' impression of such a scenario when visiting your website. Even worse, police coming to your office due to the illegal content is not a scenario any business wants to experience.

Another reason to update your website is to benefit from new features and improvements that may come with a new version.

How do I know when my website needs updating?

Your (WordPress) website has a built-in alert system that lets users know when their installations are out of date. It’s important to pay attention to these alerts. But if you rarely login to your site, you won’t see these alerts. We recommend that you login to your site at least once a month to take care of updates and to check that everything is in working order.

Whenever a new version is released or a module or theme is updated you will see a message at the top of your website admin dashboard indicating that you need to update your installation.

Will updating break my site?

Usually, your website updates without any problems but sometimes things do go wrong. The more rare cases of updates breaking your website, can be:

1. I updated WordPress and my site has been replaced by a message about "scheduled maintenance"!

A common issue is that the maintenance file that displays “Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.” doesn’t delete after the update. Your website is stuck in maintenance, you need to login to your server and modify settings.

1. I updated my website and all I get is a white screen!
   

Dramatic I know, in the website community, this is known as “The White Screen of Death“. It means that you visit your website or admin area and all you see is a blank white screen. This could be caused by module or theme compatibility issues.

The solution may be to deactivate a module ot theme that isn’t compatible with the latest version of your website.

1. I updated my website and now it looks totally different!
   

This happens for a multiple of reasons, one of the most common are that the changes applied to the website's code, are overwritten by a new version.

Why does updating cause errors or break the site?

This is an entire world of possibilities here, but mostly this happens due to:

1. Changes applied to the website's code, are overwritten by a new version.
   
2. New code of the updated website is not compatible with old (custom) website code.
   
3. New code of the updated website is not compatible with existing modules.
   
4. New code of the updated module(s) is not compatible with the website.
   
5. New code of the updated module(s) is not compatible with other modules.
   
6. New code of the updated module(s) or website, have different requirements of the web server. Also, the web server needs to be updated on a regular basis.

We always advise to have regular backups of your website ready to be restored, so when an update breaks your website, it can be quickly restored to the previous (working) state. The more business critical your website is, the more frequent updates are needed. If your website is dynamic (it is an e-commerce store, has frequently commented sections, has an intranet, etc.), the updated should not be performed on the "live" website, but on a "development/testing" website. Updated will be performed on the non-public website, it will be checked for errors or issues and the changes will be deployed to the "live" website, without any downtime or anyone noticing anything.

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