As you know, technology is constantly changing. What was new yesterday is often old hat today, and keeping up with the digital “Joneses” is exhausting. However, keeping up and maintaining your WordPress website is not just a good idea, it’s necessary to its survival. I know that sounds extreme, but in all honesty, it’s the truth.

WordPress is one of the top performing open source content management systems (CMS) available today. The platform has so many pros that it could take me days to list them, so I’ll spare you the details. However, one of the main pros can also become a con if you aren’t paying attention to your website on a regular basis. You see, because WordPress is open source, it means there are hundreds of thousands of developers working every day on the platform, altering its widgets and plugins to make them better, faster and stronger. That’s pretty amazing.

But here’s where the problem lies. Because there are programmers changing code daily, it is possible that a widget, plugin or even the WordPress platform will be altered. This change really is for the better, but if the site backend is not checked for updates on a weekly or monthly basis, you may not realize that an update has been made, leaving the site vulnerable to a myriad of potential problems.

Here are a couple of the problems you could experience:

1. You fail to make an update that fixes a key problem in the functionality of one of your plugins. Moving forward, your plugin will be outdated and could potentially hinder the performance of your site.
2. You let a WordPress install pass you by. Before you know it, your website is outdated and vulnerable to security breaches, i.e. hackers. The lack of security could spell disaster for your website.

Please know that I am not saying all of this to scare you about the health of your website. I am sharing this with you in an effort to convey the importance of monitoring and maintaining your website.

At this point, I am sure you are asking yourself, “What can I do to protect my site?” Great question. There are a couple options. First, you or a staff member can dedicate some time once a month to check the status of your site. Log into the backend, conduct updates, and browse your site’s content to ensure everything is as it should be. The second option is connecting with us to discuss an annual maintenance program where we would monitor the health of your site, freeing up your time to manage your business.

Both options will effectively maintain your website. No matter which one you choose, your site and your business will thank you.