There’s no reason why a well-planned and well-built WordPress site can’t continue to be valuable for years after it’s launched – whether you choose to make ongoing changes and improvements or not. But it’s very important that you regularly update WordPress and any plugins and themes for several reasons:

• Security – this is the most important reason. WordPress is a big target for hackers and other malicious online actors – being able to hack WordPress means instant access to millions of websites. The WordPress security team is constantly working to identify and fix security risks and vulnerabilities. These measures are released as updates to WordPress. If you don’t update your WordPress, you’re missing out on known security risks, which means that sooner or later your site will likely be hacked. This can have serious consequences for your business – such as the loss of confidential information like customer data, website downtime or embarrassing content placed on your website. It will also cost you time, effort and money to fix.
• Performance – The WordPress team puts a lot of time and effort into making WordPress faster and more efficient. Keeping your WordPress up to date means your site is performing as well as it can.
• Features – Major releases of WordPress usually include improved functionality and tools that let you get more out of your site.
• User experience – Most updates to WordPress make the content management system faster, easier, and generally more pleasant to use, encouraging you to interact more with your site.
• Future-proofing – sooner or later, you’ll want to make changes to your site. These changes may require the latest version of WordPress (for example, to use a particular plugin that only works with newer versions). By updating regularly, you deal with small changes and errors on an ongoing basis, keeping your site up-to-date with core WordPress developments. If you don’t update for a year or two, it’s much more likely that you’ll experience major disruptions once you do. All these small and minor issues have then become intertwined, making diagnosis and action more difficult, time-consuming and expensive. These are the main reasons to keep WordPress updated. It’s more than just software, it’s part of your business.

At Angry Creative, we offer a WordPress management service that provides scheduled maintenance (updates) of the software your website runs – WordPress, plugins and themes. Start by booking a meeting and we can tell you how we can help you with your WordPress site!

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