{"id":2515,"date":"2017-10-10T14:21:46","date_gmt":"2017-10-10T18:21:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.knownhost.com\/blog\/?p=2515"},"modified":"2021-03-05T08:46:29","modified_gmt":"2021-03-05T13:46:29","slug":"importance-keeping-wordpress-up-to-date","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.knownhost.com\/blog\/importance-keeping-wordpress-up-to-date\/","title":{"rendered":"The Importance of Keeping WordPress Up to Date"},"content":{"rendered":"

WordPress<\/a><\/strong> is the world’s leading content management system (CMS), and powers roughly 25 percent of all the websites on the internet, from personal blogs to Forbes and the BBC. It\u2019s popular because of the combination of simple functionality and complex capabilities. Its widespread use is enabled by plugins, widgets and themes created by a robust community of developers. These add-ons are easily integrated by WordPress users to customize their sites for their specific needs.<\/p>\n

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The strength of WordPress also gives rise to one of its main criticisms; that it is difficult to maintain functionality and security, because of all the parts that must be kept up to date. The criticism is not baseless, as the global wave of breaches and website hacks has touched the quarter of the internet powered by WordPress. It would be more accurate to say that WordPress must be maintained properly to preserve functionality and security, and the various parts can make that difficult for individual users to do. If WordPress and its add-ons are kept up to date, it is an incredibly powerful platform. If they are not regularly updated, vulnerabilities are discovered and exploited, particularly in plugins<\/a>, but also in the WordPress core<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Why It’s Important<\/h3>\n

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WordPress updates extend its capabilities, integrate new technologies, address performance issues and fix security vulnerabilities. In the event of critical vulnerabilities, a temporary patch is issued to close it, pending the next full update.<\/p>\n

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All elements of the platform need to be kept up to date to keep them working together properly, including the core, plugins, and also tools like PHP and MySQL\/MariaDB. The more of these elements are running out of date versions, and the more out of date they are, the more likely and severe performance and security problems are likely to be. Research by website security firm Sucuri indicates that the majority of hacked WordPress installations<\/a> (55 percent) are running out-of-date software.<\/p>\n

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Administrators of websites suffering a breach or loss of functionality generally intended to keep their WordPress instance completely up to date, but may have put off performing updates during a busy or inconvenient moment. Once the updating process is disrupted, catching up becomes increasingly critical, and potentially more difficult, as obsolete versions may stop working properly as other items are brought up to date.<\/p>\n

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