Much like your computer, your Wordpress website requires updates to Plugins and Wordpress itself to help keep hackers out. When a security bug is found, developers will create updates to their software to help patch this. When updates are available, you may receive an email from Wordfence, a security program we have running on many sites to help notify users of updates. When you receive these emails you have three options:
- Ignore the emails: Obviously we don’t recommend this since hackers may be able to gain access to your site but technically nothing will happen right away if you don’t update these programs.
- Have us update the software: We strongly recommend this option since we will make a back up of your site if anything goes and we can revert back to that. We will also make sure all themes, plugins and Wordpress is updated.
- Update the software your self: While we don’t recommend this option, it is not rocket science and can certainly be done yourself in about 30 minutes. Here is how:
- Log into your admin site with the URL, username and password we provided you. If you don’t have this info, email your web designer and he or she will send this to you.
- Make a back up copy of your website and the database files just in case something goes wrong. We cannot stress this step enough. Even if you don’t everything completely right, the software can cause a conflict (just like updates on your computer) and can bring your site down. Abuzz Technologies does not create backups of the site for you. We recommend using a plug in such BackWPup (https://wordpress.org/plugins/backwpup/) and downloading a copy of your website periodically to your computer or dropbox BEFORE moving on to step 3.
- After logging in and backing up click on the Dashboard link at the top left of you screen (if you are not already there).
- If there are any updates to Wordpress itself, you will see “Wordpress… is available”. Click on the “Please update now.” Then click on “Update now”. Note this may bring your site down for a few minutes while your updates are installed.
- If all goes well, you should see a screen that says “Welcome to Wordpress…”. I would go back to your main site and make sure everything is still working. If not, upload your old site from the backup.
- After you are sure everything is still working, log back into Wordpress as described in step 1.
- Click on Plugins -> installed plugins on the left. This is a list of most of the software used to create your website.
- Scroll through each plugin and check to see if there is a new version of the plugin. If there is, it will be highlighted like the above image and there will be a link to “update now”. Click on this link.
- If all goes well, you will see text that says “updated” under it.
- It is VERY important you only update one plugin at a time so if something goes wrong, you will at least know which plugin caused the problem. After each plugin is updated we strongly recommend you test your site again and make sure everything is working.
- That’s it. You’re done!
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