This past year (2015) was a hard one for WordPress sites (and their owners) because of all the vulnerabilities found in different WordPress versions and so many popular plugins. There was even a public service announcement from the FBI regarding a certain group of troublesome individuals exploiting these vulnerabilities, and a later announcement stating these hackers were targeting Christian or faith-based sites. I personally helped reclaim nearly a dozen sites in the past eight months and still spend a great deal of my work week monitoring at least a dozen more. The threat is real, my friends.

Maintaining your WordPress site is extremely important! Just like a car needs regular upkeep, any WordPress website needs routine maintenance to perform as it should, for functionality sake. Until this past year though, I never dreamed of all the security risks associated with an outdated site. Neither did those clients who came so close to losing all of their hard work as a result.

How do you know if your site is at risk?

When you log in to your WordPress site, you should see something like the screenshot below.

See the number of updates pending? And the note regarding a new version of WordPress at the top? That means that on this particular site, the WordPress version is out of date, and five other plugins and/or themes are running an older version as well. Those updates could leave your site open to a hacker attempt, or to a malware infection.

What can you do about it?

You always have the option of handling these updates yourself. For safety’s sake, I recommend running a full site and database backup before updating WordPress, your theme, or any major plugins. If you are comfortable with your host account and control panel, you can manually create a full backup there, just in case anything goes awry with the updates. {Sometimes the new versions of either WordPress or the plugins don’t play well with each other. It’s rare, but conflicts do happen occasionally.} Once you have a full backup on file, you can click to update WordPress, then the themes, and then the plugins, in that order.

You can ask me to handle these updates on an “as needed” basis. I have many clients who send quick emails each month or so to let me know when there are updates pending, and I am more than happy to log in and take care of those for you quickly. {Please note: These updates will now be billed at a flat rate versus to-the-minute.}

You can purchase one of the new maintenance plans so these updates are handled automagically {by me} every month! If you are one of my regular fabulous clients, then you already received an email about all the brand new or revamped services coming this year. {If you are not on the client list yet, here’s a quick overview of some of those details.}

As you will see on that list, updated maintenance plans are now available. With all the security risks looming, it’s become very obvious that all websites – whether blog, business, or ministry – need the same services to keep them safe and running well. To ensure your website receives the best TLC possible, choose the plan that works best for you.

For more details on the available services and benefits, click over here.

Whether you allow me the privilege of caring for your WordPress site or not, please be sure someone is taking care of it! It’s definitely easier to prevent issues than to work to resolve them later!

xo,