Is it safe to activate auto-updates for WordPress plugins?
Automatic WordPress Updates: Cons
The following are the main disadvantages of automating your WordPress updates:
1. You Can Lose Traffic
One obvious benefit of automating your WordPress updates is that every update is performed automatically. You, as the website administrator, can quickly lose track of the modifications and little updates that are being made.
While this may not seem like a huge concern to you, the truth is that if you don’t know which changes are being made to your site, patches or plugins that are incompatible with the rest of the website can be installed. For example, an update may require a service level that the rest of the system does not meet.
This would almost certainly result in an “ERROR” screen appearing on some of your site’s pages, and you would lose a large amount of visitors as a result.
2. Your Site Could Crash
Website crashes are caused by more than just poor WordPress hosting. Contrary to popular opinion, a dedicated server is not the only solution. An automated upgrade can also result in a crash. This is mostly determined by the types of changes and updates implemented. There is a risk that outdated add-ons and plugins will not be compatible with newer versions of WordPress Core.
This would cause your website to break, which is why automatic WordPress upgrades are rarely recommended by WordPress professionals.
To put this into context, a single upgraded plugin could cause your entire site to break, which you’ll have to spend time correcting.
3. You Could Lose Data
If your WordPress site ever goes down, you’ll be glad you kept a current backup. WordPress crashes aren’t easy to solve (you’ll need to figure out what caused the crash), and the only way to restore it is from a recent WordPress backup.
If you don’t have a reliable backup, you risk losing a lot of data, including vital client data, if your site crashes. Furthermore, if your website crashes, all traffic will come to a standstill.
In summary, the major disadvantage of automatic WordPress updates is that you will have little understanding of what is actually being changed, as opposed to manually updating your blog, which means you face a serious chance of parts of your site crashing and you losing data (and traffic).
That being said, there are benefits to automating your updates, which we’ll discuss next.
Automatic WordPress Updates: Pros
Here are the main benefits of automating your WordPress updates:
1. Reduces Workload
There’s no doubt that automating your updates is convenient and reduces your burden, but as we’ve shown, there’s just a tremendous danger that outweighs this.
A decent compromise would be to automate parts of your changes while manually updating others. Allowing WordPress to update automatically while you manually update add-ons — theme or plugin, for example) will, at the very least, save you time.
Of course, by saving time and reducing your overall workload, you’ll be able to devote more of your time and effort to building your firm.
2. Respond Faster to Updates
As we said in the opening, the security of your blog is critical, and scanning your website for vulnerabilities and faults is a continuous and never-ending effort.
With that in mind, here are several reasons why automating your WordPress site could help make it more secure: When the developers issue a vulnerability fix or new features, the WordPress plugins or themes automatically update.
This eliminates the possibility of updates being delayed. Because postponing updates may result in security risks, automatic updates are a lifesaver.
Developers will actually urge WordPress users to auto-update features in order to run the most recent version that can detect and patch security holes and vulnerabilities before hackers attack them. This will make your website not only more safe, but also more functional.
As previously discussed, this might be a significant downside of automated WordPress updates. The plugin update may not be compatible with the rest of your site, causing serious issues. So, what is the best solution here?
The important guideline to remember here is to pay attention to who the developer is. You should be fine updating the plugins automatically as long as the developer has made a name for themselves and is worried about their reputation.
However, if the developer is a tiny coder, chances are you won’t want them to automatically run code to your website without inspection.
Conclusion
What definite conclusions can we draw about automatic WordPress updates based on the information presented above?
What definite conclusions can we take from the facts presented above? The most logical conclusion is that, while automated upgrades are handy, they are not necessarily the safest or smartest option. As a result, employing a WordPress automatic updater is a bad choice. It is not possible to configure automatic background updates. What do you think about automatic WordPress updates?
It’s great to get new security patches to fix vulnerabilities, but upgrades can destroy your site. You’ll want to be sure that such updates won’t jeopardize your plugin compatibility. Using a staging site to test whether the upgrades are compatible with your website will help keep it from crashing.
The most basic security safeguard for any WordPress website is to update it on a regular basis. Ignoring updates can lead to your site being compromised. If you are concerned about spending too much time maintaining your websites on a daily basis, using a single dashboard from which you can update all of your sites could be a solution. Security services like MalCare provide capabilities that allow you to update all of your WordPress websites from the dashboard. This means you won’t have to log in to each of your websites to monitor and update outdated plugins, themes, or WordPress core. You may use the time saved to expand your business while your website remains secure.
