WordPress powers about 18% of the Internet because it is the software of choice for business owners who want a clean and beautifully designed website that is easy for them to update. WordPress fits the bill and is also a secure solution that protects sensitive data online.  Like any software on your computer or phone that need software updates, WordPress websites also require ongoing maintenance.  There are regular plugin updates, security issues and bugs to fix.  Wordpress is not a set-it-forget-it-system, once you’ve launched your WordPress website it will need some TLC for its tenure.

You may think you can get away without updating your website, well think again. By not maintaining your website updates, you put it at risk for security issues and hacking that can have disastrous consequences on a site. The WordPress platform is one of the leading open sourced platforms used on the web and unfortunately, because of this, it is also a target for hackers.

According to Google in its State of Website Security in 2016, ‘there was an increase in the number of hacked sites by approximately 32% in 2016 compared to 2015.” In the same report, it also states that prevention is key and it’s best to take the preventative approach than to deal with the aftermath.  Recommending keeping websites, Content Management Systems (CMS) up to date.

The risks of doing it yourself include:

• Plugin incompatibility
• Theme breaks
• Plugin Security vulnerabilities

One of the advantages of WordPress is that its open source, so developers are contributing and creating new plugins and improvements all the time. The downside, however, is that a plugin created by one development team may not work well when paired with a plugin written by another developer. This is plugin incompatibility — updating one plugin causes another to break or malfunction.

An even worse issue occurs when a single plugin update causes something to break in the WordPress theme. When this happens, it can cause the entire site to break and stop functioning. This is a common occurrence when a plugin is overhauled as in the main functionality and coding of the plugin have been altered.

As for security, when a vulnerability is found in the version of a plugin or theme being used on your site, a developer can take quick action to limit any exposure.Instead of running the risk for the above, have a qualified development team or web developer to care about the security and websites updates for your WordPress site.  When it comes to WordPress maintenance, you need a qualified professional that can detect and resolve issues using programming skills so that your website business doesn’t suffer. 

WP Engine is a WordPress exclusive hosting company.  By using WP Engine’s hosting platform for your business website, you are investing in the overall health of your website.  Along with its high security, automatically creates backups of your site every day, it allows your site to be blazing fast too. And you may not have known, but your choice of web hosting absolutely affects your SEO! Google takes site speed into account with their search algorithm because they have found that the longer it takes for your site to load, the more visitors will abandon their site and go about their day.  Business owners who migrate to WP Engine see their sites load an average of 2x-4x faster, and notice an immediate increase in their search engine results.

The ideal scenario for WordPress maintenance is to pair a qualified development team with a secured hosting platform like WP Engine that features a development staging area and a daily backup system. We are very happy to say that we offer our clients managed premium hosting with WP Engine at Sparrow Digital. 

If you’re ready to take the next step and want to migrate your WordPress business site to WP Engines hosting, contact us and we would be happy to explain how Sparrow Digital can provide ongoing site maintenance and secure hosting. For all our web services click Here.