Security Versus Functionality

We’ve been getting questions from a few clients seeing notices in their WordPress dashboard to update their current WordPress version or apply updates to plugins. We manage these updates as specific plugins that support key features of a website may have stability issues with the latest and greatest WordPress updates or the updates from other plugins. Usually, 3rd-party plugin developers do not release new plugin updates until after extensive testing on new WordPress versions have been completed. We take this a step further and test under our hosting environment and application configurations. For these reasons and for the overall functionality of our client websites, we need to balance the benefits of introducing new features into a website from a new WordPress version or plugin update and how that may affect positively or negatively affect the current functionality of the website. Sometimes, an update can break a specific feature or the website as a whole resulting in downtime. We backup client websites and test new updates on staging servers, not to break or change any code on production servers until proper testing has been completed and confirmed, then we apply those updates to the production environment.

With this process, we update WordPress and plugin versions that are security-based that fix vulnerabilities and often do not update right away to versions that are feature-based only or those that have not been fully tested yet. Balancing shiny new feature updates versus security updates is one of the many benefits from our Website Support Plans. Our goal is to keep our client websites up and running, secure, and loading quickly. For this reason, we do not support all plugins or updates all plugins or WordPress versions that do not have sufficient testing, may slow down websites, or add additional complexity to the overall compatibility of the environment.

Some clients may see notices in the WordPress dashboard for “Updates”. If you are a 616 Marketing Group client, please be sure to leave the updating to us and manage these for the overall health and efficient functionality of your website. If you have questions on any specific updates that you see, or would like to have a new plugin installed on your behalf, please don’t hesitate to reach out so we can look into its compatibility.

Get More Out of Your Website

If you’re not a current 616 Marketing Group client where we manage your website hosting, updates, and support – let us know if you’re updating your website and come across any issues. Our team would love to take a look at your website and provide you a few free tips to fix your issue and learn about our support plans that will give you your time back – concentrate on your business, we’ll manage your website.