Does your web agency provide you with “WordPress updates”? Does your web designer want monthly payments from you for “website updates”? Don’t you understand why you have to pay again when you have already paid once for the creation of that website? This article is just for you. Read on.
First, briefly. Is your web graphic designer or web agency a scammer? Do they repeatedly ask you for money for something that is not needed or even made up? No and no. Website updates are a real thing and are important to you and your online business.
Now in more detail.
What is WordPress
If you are reading this article, there is a good chance that your presentation website, blog, or eshop is running on WordPress. WordPress is the most popular administration and publishing system in the world – up to 35% of all websites run on it ( and more than 60% of websites that use any publicly available administration system).
What are WordPress updates
WordPress is constantly being developed, modified and improved. This is one of the main reasons why it has been the most popular system for creating and running websites since its inception in 2003.
The current version of WordPress is 5.6 (due in December 2020), which means that up to 5 versions have been released so far, which have had significant improvements and many changes that have made the website more secure, more beautiful and more usable.
Each major version of WordPress also has many more subversions – e.g. version 5 has had versions 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, etc. up to the current 5.6. In total, up to 40 different versions of WordPress have been released so far, each with many changes and improvements.
In addition, WordPress also has so-called security updates. These versions do not add any new features or appearance, but only fix security vulnerabilities that have been found. Such updates are often installed automatically by WordPress, as security vulnerabilities need to be fixed as soon as possible. However, if you are using an older version of WordPress (e.g. 4.5), WordPress will not automatically upgrade your website to 5.6.1, as this change is a big one and could make your website unusable. Therefore, if you are using an old version of WordPress, your website will remain insecure even after WordPress releases new security updates.
WordPress usually needs to be updated about two or three times a month, while a major WordPress update happens about once or twice a year.
What are WordPress plugin updates
WordPress has become the world’s most widely used web system in large part because it allows programmers to enhance WordPress features relatively easily, or to add their own features – features that WordPress itself does not have.
Functionality is modified or added via so-called plugins (the word plugin loosely translates from English as plugin). Every website can use an essentially unlimited number of plugins that improve or supplement its functionality. Your website also uses plugins – you may only have a few, but in real life our clients’ websites use 20 or even 30 different plugins.
Each plugin, like WordPress itself, can be updated. Plugin authors improve them based on feedback from their customers, fix bugs, patch security vulnerabilities, or modify the code to be compatible with newer versions of WordPress.
It’s common to see dozens of prompts a month in your WordPress admin asking you to update the plugins your site uses.
What are WordPress theme updates
To make matters worse, in addition to WordPress and plugins, you also need to account for updates to your theme.
What are the themes? Every WordPress website needs a theme. This is a kind of template for the appearance of your web page. However, it not only determines the look, but also a lot of functionality, just like plugins do.
So you need to update WordPress, plugins, even the theme?
Yes, exactly. What’s worse, each of these parts is usually created by a different creator. Each one works a little differently. In doing so,
Is there anything else that needs to be updated?
Yes, the PHP version (which is the “program” that runs on the server computer that runs your web page and displays it to visitors), and the database version (which is the table on the server computer where all your data is stored and from which that data is retrieved for display to visitors to your web page).
What is PHP
PHP is the so-called server-side scripting (programming) language that every WordPress website runs on. PHP (like WordPress) is gradually evolving and improving, resulting in a new version of PHP. The newer version of PHP is inherently more secure and websites run faster on it. This means that when you move your blog or e-shop to a newer version of PHP, your website will be more secure and load faster for your visitors.
The problem is that every new version of PHP can cause you a problem by making your WordPress, your theme, or some of your plugins not ready for it, not compatible with the new version, and some part of your website will stop working. The worst that can happen is that your web page doesn’t load at all and either throws some ugly error message in English to your visitors, or your potential customers see just a white, blank page instead of your website.
A major PHP update occurs by default once a year, while smaller subversions are released several times a year.
What is MySQL and MariaDB
MySQL and MariaDB are types of databases. If your website runs on WordPress, you can be sure that it is connected to a MySQL or MariaDB database in addition to PHP.
Database languages are also constantly evolving and once in a while a new version appears. Each new version has the potential to break the functionality of your website. The less you take care of your website, the greater the chance that when you update your PHP or database, your website will stop working the way you want it to.
Inhale… deep exhale. Anything else that needs updating?
As for your website, no. Apart from updates to WordPress, plugins, themes, PHP and MySQL, you usually don’t need to update anything else on your site. But, keep in mind that you should also regularly update your computer’s operating system (Windows, OSX) and your mobile device (Android, iOS). Because your website may be up-to-date and secure, but if your Windows is not up-to-date and hackers manage to gain access to your computer through a hole (security flaw) in your operating system, it can be very easy to get the password to administer your website.
If a hacker has your password, they can make all sorts of changes to your website that you can make – like publishing thousands of articles with advertising, or sending spam emails to all your email contacts. Oops. If something like this happens to you, you are also required by law to notify the relevant state regulatory authorities. You must let them know that you appear to have leaked the personal information of your customers or clients.
What if I give up on updates and don’t update anything? Then my website will still work the same a few years later, right?
Many website owners think that once something is created and it works, it must work all the time. But that’s not how it works with information technology – unfortunately, thank goodness.
When you buy a new car, that car works great. But if you want it to work great a year, two or three years from now, you’ll need to take it to the garage regularly. , change the oil regularly and also change the tyres twice a year. Without these “updates”, your car will become less safe (for example, if you drive on summer tyres in winter) and less efficient (if you don’t change the oil for a long time), or it will break down completely and become inoperable – until you fix the problem.
The same happens with websites. The only difference is that you – unless you’re a programmer – can’t see under the hood of your website, and that changes happen x times faster on the web than in the physical, offline world.
If you neglect to take care of your apartment, in a few months or years your home will be full of mould, ants, cobwebs and mess. If you skip taking care of your website, it will be equally unusable in a few years.
We see slowly rotting websites all the time during our work
It often happens to us that a new client contacts us saying that they have an old website, but it doesn’t work the way it used to. They have a bunch of updates lit up in their admin that they can’t confirm because then their site stops working. There have been x different people working on that site over the years, each of them added different plugins, made different changes, and in the end the site is an old, tattered sweater with dozens of patches of different shapes and colors. Clients then expect a miracle from us and ask us to rescue that old, tattered sweater.
If you or someone else doesn’t take care of your website regularly, sooner or later the same thing will happen to you. Your car will become inoperable. Your house will no longer be livable. Your sweater will be eaten through with moths and even patches won’t help it.
Ok, so I need to update. I just don’t have the time and I don’t know IT. What should I do?
Great that you ask. At Brandbonsai, we create beautiful, functional websites – whether we create them brand new or as a redesign of an old, dysfunctional site. However, it doesn’t stop with the launch of a new site for us. We have long-term, friendly relationships with our clients and we look after their websites on a regular basis.
Our service is called Secure Website and has become extremely popular with our clients over the last year. Clients pay us a small monthly fee for us to take responsibility for securing and updating their website. As a result, our clients have less stress about something going wrong on their site by updating it, and have more free time to focus on what makes them money. That’s called a win-win.
Conclusion
Whether you decide to use our services or not, remember that you need to take care of your website – otherwise you are setting yourself up for unnecessary complications in the future. Changing the oil on your car regularly is cheap and easy. However, when you don’t do it and your car’s engine gets damaged, repairing yours will cost many times more than a few bottles of engine oil. Even better, you don’t even have to make a single trip to the service center to take care of your website – you just need to create an order once, calmly even from your mobile phone. We’ll take care of the rest.
