The process of updating a WordPress website is the single most important maintenance task for any site owner. Your WordPress website is like a high-performance vehicle. It needs regular maintenance—oil changes, tire rotations—to run smoothly and safely. Neglecting it doesn’t just make it look bad; it leads to catastrophic failure.
WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) on the planet, powering over 40% of the entire internet. But this incredible popularity comes with a price: it makes WordPress sites a prime target for hackers worldwide. If a vulnerability is found in a popular plugin, automated bots can scan the web for millions of unpatched sites to exploit in minutes.
To combat this ever-rising tide of malicious activity, a global community of developers works tirelessly to patch vulnerabilities and improve the software. However, these crucial fixes only work if you, the site owner, apply them.
This guide will explain in detail why updating your WordPress site is non-negotiable and provide a clear, safe framework for how to do it, covering the WordPress core, your themes, and your plugins.
Part 1: The ‘Why’ – The Critical Reasons to Update Your WordPress Site
Understanding the stakes is the first step. Updating isn’t just about getting new features; it’s about protecting your business, your customers, and your reputation.
1. Ironclad Security: Your #1 Priority This is, without question, the most important reason to keep your site updated. Hacking attacks continue to rise, and most are not sophisticated, targeted assaults. Instead, hackers play a volume game. They use automated bots to scan millions of websites for known vulnerabilities in older versions of WordPress, themes, or plugins. When they find an unpatched site, they strike.
The consequences of a hack can be devastating:
- Data Theft: Hackers can steal sensitive customer information, including names, emails, and payment details, leading to massive legal and financial liability.
- Brand Defacement: Your homepage could be replaced with malicious or offensive content, destroying your brand’s credibility overnight.
- Google Blacklisting: If Google detects malware on your site, it will display a prominent warning to all visitors (“This site may harm your computer”) and remove you from search results.
- Hosting Suspension: Your web host will likely suspend your account to prevent the hack from spreading to other sites on the server.
- Malware Distribution: Your site could be used to secretly infect your visitors’ computers with viruses or redirect them to spam websites.
Developers are in a constant cat-and-mouse game with hackers, patching vulnerabilities as they are discovered. These fixes are delivered via software updates. By not updating, you are essentially leaving your front door unlocked for criminals who are actively checking the handle.
2. Peak Performance & Speed In 2025, website speed is not a luxury; it’s a necessity. Users expect pages to load in under two seconds, and Google uses site speed (specifically, its Core Web Vitals) as a direct ranking factor. Updates play a huge role in performance.
- PHP Compatibility: WordPress runs on a server-side language called PHP. Each new version of PHP (like the current 8.x series) is significantly faster and more efficient than the last. To take advantage of this speed boost, your WordPress core, themes, and plugins must all be updated to be compatible. Running outdated software on an old version of PHP is like putting regular fuel in a race car.
- Efficient Code: Developers are constantly refining their code to make it cleaner and more efficient. Updates often include optimized database queries and remove code bloat, which can lead to tangible improvements in your site’s loading times.
3. Seamless Functionality & Bug Fixes Have you ever had a contact form mysteriously stop working? Or a checkout button that suddenly leads nowhere? These issues are often caused by bugs in outdated software. Updates don’t just add new features; they fix hundreds of bugs reported by the user community. By not updating, you are choosing to run a version of the software that is known to have flaws, which can directly impact your ability to generate leads and sales.
4. Essential Compatibility A WordPress website is a complex ecosystem where the core software, theme, and dozens of plugins must all work together in harmony. A single outdated component can create a conflict that breaks the entire system.
- Core Updates: When WordPress releases a major update (e.g., WordPress 6.9), it may introduce new features or change how things work under the hood. Themes and plugins must then be updated to remain compatible with these changes.
- The Domino Effect: If you update your WordPress core but fail to update your plugins, a critical feature might break. Conversely, if you update a plugin but are running a very old version of WordPress, the plugin may not work at all. Keeping everything current ensures a stable and reliable ecosystem.
Part 2: The ‘What’ – Understanding the 3 Layers of WordPress Updates
To maintain your site properly, you need to know what you’re updating. There are three distinct layers.
1. WordPress Core Updates This is the foundational software itself. Core updates come in two flavors:
- Major Releases (e.g., 6.8, 6.9): These are released a few times a year and typically include new features and significant enhancements (like major updates to the block editor).
- Minor Releases (e.g., 6.8.1, 6.8.2): These are released as needed and are critically important. They contain security patches and bug fixes. By default, WordPress will attempt to apply these minor security updates automatically.
2. Theme Updates Your theme controls the visual design and layout of your site. Theme updates are crucial for patching security holes (yes, themes can be a vulnerability!), ensuring compatibility with the latest WordPress core features, and sometimes adding new customization options.
3. Plugin Updates This is the most frequent and often most critical layer of updates. Each plugin adds a specific piece of functionality to your site, and with that functionality comes a potential new entry point for attackers. Because there are tens of thousands of plugins from different developers, this is where most vulnerabilities are found. Keeping your plugins updated daily or weekly is essential.
Part 3: The ‘How’ – A Safe WordPress Update Workflow
The fear of an update “crashing the site” is real, but it can be almost entirely eliminated by following a safe, professional workflow.
Step 1: Always Backup First (The Golden Rule) This is the single most important rule. Before you touch a single update button, you must have a complete, recent backup of your website’s files and database. If anything goes wrong, you can restore the backup and your site will be back to normal in minutes. You can create backups using a dedicated WordPress plugin (like UpdraftPlus) or through your web hosting control panel.
Step 2: Use a Staging Site (The Professional Method) A staging site is a private clone of your live website. It’s a safe sandbox where you can apply updates and test for any issues without affecting your public-facing site. Most quality WordPress hosts (like SiteGround, Kinsta, and WP Engine) offer one-click staging environments. The professional workflow is:
- Create a staging copy of your site.
- Apply all updates on the staging site.
- Thoroughly test the staging site for any errors.
- If everything works perfectly, “push” the changes from staging to your live site.
Step 3: Read the Changelogs Before you click “update” on a major plugin or theme, take a moment to view the details or “changelog.” This text file will tell you what has been fixed, changed, or added. It can give you a heads-up about any major changes or potential conflicts.
Step 4: The Order of Operations While not a strict rule, it’s generally best practice to update in this order:
- Plugins
- Themes
- WordPress Core
Update them one by one, and check your site quickly after each one to ensure everything is still working.
Step 5: Test, Test, Test After you’ve finished updating (whether on staging or live), you need to test critical functionality. Don’t just look at the homepage. Check key areas like:
- Can you submit your contact forms successfully?
- If you have a store, can you add a product to the cart and go through the entire checkout process?
- Do your photo galleries and sliders still work?
- Do the admin and post-editing screens work correctly?
From Chore to Essential Strategy
At this point, you may feel convinced of the importance of keeping a WordPress site up-to-date, but skeptical about having the time or technical skill to do it. The idea of managing backups, staging sites, and testing can seem daunting, especially when you need to be focused on running your business. This is where professional website maintenance becomes not a luxury, but a wise investment in your peace of mind and your company’s security.
So, how can any site owner stay on top of upgrades without the stress? Firstly, We Are Web Design now provide automatic upgrades and comprehensive maintenance plans. The service makes a backup of your site, applies the upgrades in a safe environment, and can roll everything back should a problem occur. That way, your site remains constantly updated, and you do not have to worry about an upgrade crashing your site or leaving you vulnerable.
Check out our Website Maintenance page for more information about our different packages, or contact us to discuss it with us now.
