Website Plugin Updates Explained and Why They Are Crucial

Imagine this: you’ve just built a brand spanking new website and you are proud of it. But you keep getting notifications on your email and phone about plugin updates. There are so many of these notifications every week that you want to pull your hair out.

Even though 500 new sites are created using WordPress.org every day, most people don’t truly understand anything about the versatility and importance of WordPress plugins.

Before you unsubscribe from these notifications, you need to understand what plugin updates are, why they are so important, and why plugins for your WordPress site need to be updated regularly. Keep reading to find out more. 

What Is a Website Plugin Update?

Let’s start with the basics. What exactly is a WordPress plugin? 

The brilliant thing about the WordPress website, and the reason why it has millions of satisfied users, is that the basic WordPress setup is quite simple.

But you can greatly enhance that basic setup using plugins. These could be considered akin to apps, since smartphones in themselves are pretty simple, but are amplified in their performance capability through the addition of apps.

When you have the basic WordPress site setup, you are limited with functionality. But, you can start adding plugins, like ones to enhance your SEO score, or to allow for Instagram photos to be displayed on your WordPress site. This makes your WordPress site unique and truly your own.

A typical WordPress site can have dozens of plugins added in the background to enhance its function and form.

It Ensures Your Website Stays up to Date on Security

The most important reason you need to ensure that all your WordPress plugins are updated is due to security.

Every time, a plugin owner or designer updates a plugin, they are doing it for a very good reason. It’s not just so they can annoy you, although it might seem like that. And that reason is to protect your site from cyberattacks.

30,000 websites are hacked daily! And a new cyberattack happens every 40 seconds. As time goes on, these cyberattacks are only going to become more frequent.

WordPress and plugin designers know that. And therefore, they work their hardest in the background to produce updates that will protect their software from cyberhackers. 

Of course, nothing is completely infallible. But if you update your plugins as soon as one is available, then you can ensure that your precious website, the essence of your brand identity, stays safe. 

It Prevents Your Website from Flagging on Performance

Another motivation for plugin designers to release an update is to improve the plugins’ performance.

A lot of software works on the principle of ‘done is better than perfect.’ This is because they know that as users interact with the plugin, they will discover numerous bugs on their own and this can assist the designer in improving the software better than they would on their own.

So, plugins get released ‘imperfect’ and then are updated and improved over time. A lot of plugin designers aren’t big businesses either, but one-man shops. This means that they are working under immense time pressure and can only do updates as their schedule allows.

All of this to say that if you wish your plugins and thus your WordPress site to work impeccably, you will want to ensure you update your plugins.

It Ensures You Are Updated on All New Features

And as with applications and software that keep on adding new features to enthral the customer into sticking around longer, plugins do exactly the same. For example, if you have an SEO plugin, as Google changes SEO rules, new plugin updates will be released to account for these new rules. 

Or if you have a plugin that works with your SSL certificate, then the plugin will update constantly as the digital certificate requirements change. 

Not only do you need to ensure that you keep on updating your website’s content and keep its look fresh and trendy, but you need to update your plugins regularly as well. This will ensure your website stays on top of the market trends and doesn’t start getting slow or cumbersome (FYI – customers tend to sign off a website that’s too slow to load). 

You Can’t Just Update Plugins for Your WordPress Site Willy-Nilly

Maybe you are getting motivated by all the reasons presented above to do your website plugin updates yourself. Hold your horses! It isn’t as easy as hitting the update button.

There are many steps an individual will need to take before hitting ‘update.’ The most important being that you must back up your website in case something goes wrong while updating. You don’t want to lose all your precious websites data because you tried updating your plugins yourself unsuccessfully.

Also, you will want to ensure that you do these plugin updates at a time when you don’t have a huge influx of website traffic. Your website might be offline for a few minutes while updates are taking place. This means doing it on the weekend or in the middle of the night is best. 

That’s why hiring a full-service digital marketing agency is the best choice here.

Hire Polka Dot Marketing to Do Your Plugin Updates for You

If you don’t have time to do your plugin updates yourself, you might wait too long, and your website might end up getting hacked in the meantime. This could result in hundreds or even thousands of dollars of reparation costs. 

Avoid all that by hiring Polka Dot Marketing to do updates on the plugins for your WordPress site. We are professionals in our field and are ready to make your WordPress site safe, secure, and up to date. Contact us today and get started!