WordPress 7.0 Is Here: It’s the Perfect Time to Revisit Your Website Update Protocols

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Still running your WordPress updates like a mom-and-pop business or a personal blog? The release of WordPress 7.0 is a good time to level up your website update protocols.  

WordPress 7.0 was released last week (on May 20). It’s the first major WordPress version-number jump release in four years. Many WordPress updates focus on fixing bugs and incremental improvements. By contrast, WordPress 7.0 is a fundamental shift in how the platform operates. The biggest difference? AI infrastructure built in.

This new release signals an ideal time to revisit how your website’s software updates (WordPress Core, Plugins, and PHP versions) are being managed.

When a new client asks us to take over management of their website, we sometimes discover that software updates either haven’t been performed on a regular schedule (monthly or weekly) or were managed without any real process or structure. This is a recipe for disaster. Plugin vulnerabilities are the most common cause of WordPress hacks. Frequent updates to update or replace outdated plugins help mitigate this risk.

Here are the top mistakes we see being made when it comes to managing updates on WordPress sites:

  • Not having a recent backup of the website and database. If something goes wrong with the software updates and you need to revert back to an archived version of the site, you want it to be a backup made in the last few hours. For sites where content changes hourly (such as e-commerce or LMS sites), the most recent backup should be only minutes old.
  • Skipping compatibility checks. Far too many WordPress core and plugin updates are being run without first checking the documentation for the new version of each plugin for compatibility with the target version of WordPress and PHP. Plugin version incompatibility is the top reason why functionality on WordPress sites sometimes breaks with updates. Most incompatibilities are clearly listed in the plugin developer documentation.
  • Not testing major updates on a staging site first. Most website hosting plans enable you to spin up a staging or development version of your website where you can run the updates and test to see how they affect your site. If anything breaks on the site or doesn’t look right, you can take the time needed to mitigate it. Meanwhile, your live site remains unaffected. When all the bugs are worked out, you can run the same updates (and fixes) on the live site.
  • Not testing the site immediately after updates. The goal is for the website to work exactly as it did before updates. That’s why you need a thorough quality assurance process to test all core pages to ensure they still display properly, that buttons still work, videos still play, and there are no page errors. Importantly, you’ll want to test on desktop and mobile to ensure that the user experience is consistent. Finally, be sure to test your contact form to ensure it still works and email notification is received after updates. If you have an e-commerce website or a site with a learning management system, that functionality should be tested after updates.
  • Not scheduling the updates. Depending on the amount of traffic to your website, and the time of day most traffic occurs, you should identify a day and time to run the updates when it will have a minimal impact on website visitors. Sometimes this means late-night or early-morning updates.

Are you making any of these mistakes? If so, know that starting to leverage best practices will help you reduce headaches, make your site more secure, and deliver a consistently good experience for your visitors. Will following best practices require more time and planning? It will. But consider these three critical reasons why you should be using a more structured approach to your website software updates:

1. Security. You owe it to your customers and prospective customers to ensure a safe experience while visiting your website. In fact, you actually have a legal responsibility to implement security protocols to prevent breaches and malicious links and protect consumer data. See the Federal Trade Commission’s documentation on protecting personal information here. Regular software updates are crucial to keep your website secure and visitors safe. A structured approach in which you’re checking plugin versions for compatibility and retiring unsupported plugins is key to good security.

2. Search Rankings. Changes in the way that a plugin interacts with your site’s SEO plugin to generate schema markup, can sometimes negatively impact search rankings. It’s crucial to fully understand what may change with the newest software update. This is why it’s a good idea to also have someone managing Google Search Console and keeping an eye on your Google Analytics reports. You’ll want to consult with this person before running any major updates so that any known SEO issues with new software versions can be mitigated before rolling them out to your live website.

3. Reputation and trust signals. If your website has broken functionality, strange error codes displaying on your pages or in the user’s browser, or broken links, it calls your brand’s credibility into question. If a plugin update breaks key functionality or wrecks your site’s styling for a period of time, visitors will wonder if your company is still in business, and if so, who’s steering the ship.

Would you like our help?

At Saltworks, we have a proven track record of professionally managing WordPress sites of all sizes. By combining best practices with our comprehensive Quality Assurance (QA) process, we can help keep your site running smoothly. Reach out to discuss which Saltworks website technical management plan might be right for you.

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