\f0\fs38 \cf0 Hey everybody Mike Linville from Black Dog Education here to answer your
questions about web design web development and online marketing with this week's installment
of Office Hours. Now this week's question comes in from Darla. Darla writes WordPress
comes out with updates is fairly frequently. Do I really need to update my WordPress installation
every time or can I just skip a few and do it periodically? That's, Darla, that's a really
good question actually and it's one that comes up quite frequently because WordPress and
other software like update themselves if they're good, pretty frequently so unfortunately there
is no one answer. I can't tell you yes you always have to or no you can go ahead and
skip it. What you really need to do is you need to take a look at why the upgrade or
why that update is being sent out there. Software programs like WordPress typically will update
themselves for one of about three different reasons there's either a security patch that's
coming out. They're either trying to fix some bugs that are already in the live version
or update and rollout new features so when the question comes up is this right for me
should I really do it. What you take a look at is really what is that specific update
concerning. The good news about WordPress is whenever they rollout one of these new
upgrades they don't do it automatically they say there is a new version would you like
to update you can always go to their website and take a look at the release notes and this
is a good piece of information for you to know because what the release notes are going
to tell you, why the upgrade, it's going to tell you what the version is going to go to.
It's going to tell you if there is any security information that is involved it will give
you a list of all files are being updated and I think there's also a link to more specific
like more detailed change log information now that stuff like line by line changes super
nerdy stuff you probably don't need that, but it's a good idea to understand what's
involved in there so what I'm asking, should I be doing this upgrade and I'm going to ask
three questions. The first one is, is there some functionality that I just can't live
without. If the new version has something that I've been waiting for that's really cool,
then do it, let it rip no problems. The second question is am I having any problems with
my current installation so you know sometimes you may have a bunch of different plugins
work in WordPress and you may have some bugginess going on if you have some of that going on
and this update is going to be speaking specifically to that, then I say absolutely do it. If not
you probably don't have to worry about it. The third question and probably the one that
I think is the most important is are there any security information updates associated
with this, now if there is anything I mean anything security related with an upgrade
absolutely do it here's the thing WordPress is open source and what open source means
is that that means that the code is out there for everybody to see. You can read the lines
of PHP you can see where all the database inserts and stuff is happening now the good
part about that is it makes it really easy to develop. So you get developers from all
over the world that are trying to make this thing bigger and better and stronger and faster
and we really appreciate all the work that they do the bad part about that is that hackers
have access to this code too. You probably ever thought about that but they're looking
at the exact same code they know where the database inserts are going in they know where
the JavaScript calls are so you know all a hacker needs to know is which version you're
running and they're going to know exactly which exploits are going to work on your website.
So absolutely make sure you keep it up to date. So get back to your question Darla,
"Do I need to upgrade every single time?" The short answer is you gotta take a look
at why the upgrade is happening. If it's security-related absolutely do it every single time. If you
don't have any problems with your site and not really chomping at the bit to get any
new functionality, don't worry about it. Let it rip wait till next time. Wait until something
security related comes out and then you can go ahead and take care of it. Again this is
Mike Linville of Black Dog Education I want to say thank you for stopping by if you like
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