At Ad4!, our agency launches new, beautiful websites all the time. But launching is just the first step. A website is a big investment for your business and keeping it safe and secure should be a high priority.
Like most software, WordPress is constantly releasing updates and security is arguably the most important reason for keeping your site up-to-date. WordPress is one of the most widely used content management systems and it’s popularity makes it a prime target for hackers. You may not think a hacker would be interested in targeting your website, but it’s not your actual website they are after. They are after the server, or actual computer, that is running your website. If they can gain access to your server, they have free computing power to do whatever they want: send out spam, expose viruses, or insert malicious links. The number one way to prevent unauthorized entry to your website is to keep it updated.
Another major consequence of letting your website become outdated is the SEO hit it could take. If your website becomes compromised, search engines won’t trust your site and may rank it lower or even blacklist it in the search results. It can be hard, time consuming, and costly to recover if this were to happen.
So we can agree, keeping your website updated is a priority. Now what? The actual process of updating your website can become technical. Automatic updates through the WordPress interface can cause issues. There are things to consider such as plugin compatibility and database migrations. Also, saving a full backup of the website files and SQL database is a best practice. There’s no need to be afraid though, the Ad4! team is hear to help when it comes to the upgrading process. If you’d like our ad firm to evaluate your website and get it up-to-date give us a call today!