Step By Step: How To Update Your WordPress Plugins
Today, I’ll be speaking about the second part of keeping your website and business safe. In the last blog, we spoke about why you need to back up your website for better security. If you missed it, you can catch up here.
Just a note, before we go on – for this blog, I’m specifically talking about WordPress websites.
First, let’s do a quick recap of the last blog. It’s important to back up your website so that if you fall prey to hackers, or you have an incompatibility that breaks your website, you have a backup that you can then upload, and you can relax. Otherwise, if you lose it all, then effectively your online business is gone, you will have to build it up from scratch, and it’s a waste of time and money. To prevent this, back up your website regularly and automatically so that you don’t have to think about it.
Part two is updating your WordPress plugins. If you have a plugin that is out of date on your WordPress website, it is a vulnerability in your website that allows hackers to get into your website, we don’t want that do we?
Before you get started, please make sure you have followed the first process in this series, and that is backing up your website because sometimes when you update plugins, it might break your website. So I want to make sure that you have a backup just in case but most of the time, it’s fine.
Step 1: Find Out What Needs an Update
Log into the back of your website. Once you arrive at your dashboard, you will see the top two arrows going around in the circle.
This is basically telling you that you need to update something, and how many things that you need to update. It might be either themes, or plugins. Click on it and it will take you straight to a page where it will tell you what is outdated and what you can update.
Step 2: Update What is Out of Date
In my instance, I only have a theme that is out of date, So I’m going to be updating that. You will probably also have plugins that are out of date which is very easy to do. You would select what is what needs to be updated and click on Update Themes.
Step 3: What Happens While it Updates?
Once you start this process, you will need to wait for it to be finished. Sometimes, it can take a long time, especially if you have multiple plugins up to date.
While the updating of the plugins is going on, your website will be down, and it will say that the site is undergoing some maintenance, but this will only show while your website is updating. Once that’s finished, your website will go back to normal.
Step 4: One Last Thing
Once you have finished with the updates, you should go back to your website and triple-check that it’s working because like I mentioned, sometimes an updated plugin might break your website and it’ll need to be fixed.
For peace of mind, I would also recommend that you fill out a form if you’re updating a form plugin because it might affect how it works.
How Often Should This be Done?
Since these can’t be done automatically, I schedule this update weekly by setting a reminder in Asana project tools, but you can use whichever method works for you. It should ideally be done weekly to make sure that you have minimal risk of your website going down.
I look forward to connecting with you, helping you run your business online, getting more clients, and making sure that your systems are set up and ready so that you can grow and be successful in your business (and, of course, life.)
That’s all for today. I’ll see you soon
