Why You Should Keep Your WordPress Theme and Plugins Up to Date?

Every time a new update gets released, you might have a few questions. Should I continue to install it or not? What happens if I update it, and why should I update it? 

This article will answer your question and explain the significance of using the latest version of WordPress. WordPress is continuously changing. So, to keep up with new standards, WordPress, plugins, and themes are needed to be updated regularly. The updates provide new features, bug fixes, enhanced performance, security updates, etc. So, if you do not update your WordPress, there you might miss out on new features and suffer from security issues, etc.

Security is the most important reason why you should keep your WordPress updated. WordPress powers more than 40% of the websites in the world, which is why it’s always a common target for hackers. Similarly, as it is open-source, anyone from normal users to malicious code distributors, can study and learn the source code and find different ways to break into any site.

In order to prevent such threats, WordPress constantly releases an update that fixes any security vulnerability as soon as it is reported. This threat is not only limited to WordPress but the plugins and themes that you use on your site as well. So, if you are using an older version of the themes or plugins, that can be easily exploited by the hackers to launch any malicious attack on your site.

Bug Fixes

The new updates go through a detailed testing phase in order to prevent any kind of bugs or threats. But, still, there may occur a situation where the software encounters such bugs because of which, constant minor releases of WordPress, themes, and plugins are done, which helps in fixing those bugs.

This means that, by choosing not to update WordPress, you are also deciding to use software with bugs that will cause a negative impact on your site.

New Features

Each new update comes with new or updated features to the software. For example, WordPress 5.8 introduced blocks as widgets. Similarly, the theme and plugins that you are using may add new exciting features in the new release, and if not updated, you will miss it.

This will also result in difficulties in getting any kind of help online, as your experience of using the software will be a lot different than people using the updated version.

Speed

It has been reported that one-second delay in page response decreases your customer satisfaction by 16%. This only shows how valuable speed can be to your site. So, each new release of WordPress, themes, and plugins includes a number of performance enhancements that make WordPress function more quickly and efficiently.

Speed is also one of the major factors in acquiring a good SEO score. So, making sure that your site is running the latest version of the software in order for it to perform at the maximum level can be vital.

How to update your WordPress?

WordPress has an update notification mechanism built-in. When you connect to your WordPress dashboard, it displays the number of available updates. You can go to your Dashboard > Updates page and install the updates.

WordPress also has an auto-update feature that will help you out. The auto-update for minor releases will already be turned on and you can choose to enable the auto-update feature for major releases as well. This feature is available for all the themes and plugins too and doing so will ensure that you never miss any new releases.