By Jason Dorsett, Bayshore Solutions Director of IT
Over the years, the WordPress platform has evolved dynamically in terms of features and performance. In fact, its popularity can be gauged by an ever-increasing number of WordPress users.
Did you know that at present, 22 percent of the websites on the internet are WordPress sites? This Platfom is often a good choice as it is affordable and gives you full control to manage and update your site. To protect the integrity of your site, however, it is extremely important to update your WordPress site and plug-ins on a regular basis for many reasons including security, performance, and bug fixes.
Let us take a deeper dive to understand why this is so important:
Improved Security
Whether you know this or not, WordPress is a big target for hackers. Since it is a CMS that powers almost a quarter of the internet, hackers are constantly trying to insert malicious codes, take sites down and steal data.
However, to minimize vulnerability of WordPress sites to hackers, the WordPress security team is working endlessly to indentify and fix security loopholes and risks. These fixes are released as WordPress updates that help address security vulnerabilities in a quick and timely manner.
If you don’t keep your site and plug-ins updated, you are leaving your WordPress site vulnerable to security risks, which can have a serious impact on your business, such as loss of confidential business data, client details and website downtime. Plus, fixing it will cost you further time, effort and money.
The most common security issue for WordPress plugins that has arisen in recent months is cross site scripting (XSS) vulnerability. This has affected dozens of websites and plugins with weak security measures. So to avoid being part of this statistic, it is important you keep your WordPress site and plug-ins updated.
Enhanced Performance
Updates don’t just address security issues. They also impact performance. Plug-ins basically allow website owners to exert specific control over site performance.
Updated plug-ins can easily improve your site performance by speeding up scripts and database queries; and simultaneously ensuring that it runs more efficiently.
Bug Fixes
If you are concerned about bugs, then WordPress updates can help. Software bugs are harmful and do a great deal of damage to your website. They can ruin a smooth user experience of your website (and therefore your brand reputation) or even impact the performance of your WordPress theme. They can also be serious security loopholes.
Regardless of their level of severity, what’s important is that software bugs should be fixed immediately. The WordPress team continues to release new updates that fix bugs and make your site more secure and stable. By installing these updates, you can easily ensure that your site keeps running seamlessly without any front or back end glitches.
Improved User Experience
By keeping your WordPress site up to date, you can get access to new features and interactive tools. Most WordPress updates make the website quicker and easier to use, encouraging your audience to interact with the site even more.
The recent releases of WordPress have included significant improvements to the UX of the admin screen and also accessibility improvements, giving users and site administrators greater control and better experience. The challenge for site owners is knowing what plug-ins to choose and what steps to take to keep their WordPress site updated and secure.
This is where Bayshore Solutions comes into the picture. We are a trusted, reliable and an award-winning interactive marketing agency. Our expertise in web design, development and SEO services enables us to provide you with the right strategy and advice on how to develop, update and market your WordPress site to drive business results.
To learn more, get in touch with us today!