Automatic WordPress updates: What are the risks and benefits for your website?

WordPress updates, whether manual or automatic, always raise questions and even fears among webmasters. These updates are necessary for the security and scalability of your site, but they also entail risks. So should you activate WordPress automatic updates? Let's explore the issues.

Manual updates

Regardless of whether you update manually or automatically, the risks are there.

All in all, no matter whether the update is automatic or manual, you're bound to run into problems sooner or later.

What are the risks of WordPress updates?

From simple bugs to site inaccessibility, here are the most common problems:

• Action required : Sometimes an update requires manual intervention to adjust certain parameters or configurations.
• A plugin or theme has a bug : An update can introduce a malfunction, especially if the plugin or theme is no longer maintained by its developers.
• Version incompatibility A plugin or addon depends on another plugin and may not be updated as frequently, creating conflicts.

How to reduce risk

To avoid these risks and inconveniences, a staging process is necessary: this consists of trying out every update in a test environment before applying it in production. However, this practice requires considerable time and resources, which is not feasible for smaller sites.

Automatic updates

What are the advantages of WordPress automatic updates?

1. Safety gain

By activating automatic updates, your site is protected against the latest security vulnerabilities as soon as they are identified. This reduces the risk of hacking and keeps your site safe without systematic manual intervention.

2. Save time and energy

Automatic updates reduce the need for frequent intervention. Instead of manually checking for new versions of plugins or WordPress, you save precious time that can be reinvested in higher value-added tasks.

3. More minor bugs

Thanks to regular updates, the bugs encountered will be more minor overall, simply because the changes are more minor. What's more, diagnosis will be simpler: if one plugin is causing a problem, you'll quickly find which of the few recently modified scripts is causing the problem, whereas if all plugins have received an update, you'll have to test them all one by one.

Requirements for automatic updates

With automatic updates, there are even more important prerequisites than with manual updates.

1. Automated and outsourced backups

Backups are essential in some cases. It is therefore important to have regular, outsourced backups with long retention times. These backups must be selectively and easily restorable.

On the LRob web hostingwe perform a host backup going back 1 year.

2. Site monitoring

You should monitor the response of your sites and check them manually from time to time.

Via our LRob web hostingwe monitor the correct response of each hosted site.

3. Availability

You need to react quickly if necessary, to prevent a problem from affecting your site for too long. And you need to have the right tools to diagnose (access to logs, phpMyAdmin, file explorer, deactivation of plugins from the hosting panel - all available on the LRob web hosting). Your LRob support can help you diagnose and solve your problem, by getting involved in WordPress research and diagnostics.

What should I do if I have a problem with a WordPress update?

If an update causes a problem, you need to react quickly and effectively:

• View logs Server logs can quickly reveal the source of the problem.
• Deactivate the offending plugin If you can do without it, deactivate the plugin concerned.
• Adapt settings : Sometimes a simple setting change is enough to solve the problem.
• Developer support Contact support for the plugin or theme concerned to report the problem and get help.
• Restore a backup If the problem is critical and has no immediate solution, then a backup restore may be necessary. In this case, it may make sense to temporarily suspend (automatic) updates until a solution is found. If you don't have a backup on your side, your LRob support can restore its host backup.
• Contact your LRob support We manage a large number of sites, so it's highly likely that we've already spent hours solving a similar problem, or that our experience will enable us to find your solution very quickly. We're always happy to help you save time!

In short: manual or automatic update?

Manual update

By updating manually, you delay the appearance of problems that you'll have to solve sooner or later, while exposing yourself to more security holes.

This choice may be appropriate for very complex sites, subject to potential bugs and requiring more extensive monitoring.

Automatic update

In auto MAJ you risk a temporary bug, so you have to deal with the (rare) problems as soon as they appear.

The exception: complex sites

The exception being large, complex sites, such as WooCommerce with custom dev, where in this case it's better to staging and testing each update (max. every 3 months, or when a known security flaw appears), for an appropriate maintenance fee.

With a professional hosting service, such as that offered by LRobYou can benefit from technical support and extended backups, up to a year in the past, to secure your site against unforeseen events.

Conclusion

Overall, we feel that automatic updating should be your default choice, as security takes precedence over functionality. If you're "agile", then this shouldn't be a problem. After all, it's better to have a bug to fix than a hacked site and all its consequences to deal with. Small and medium-sized structures will often benefit more from automatic updates, while more complex sites require specific, in-depth maintenance management.

If you're ready to embrace automatic updates, make sure you have backups and a monitoring strategy in place to deal effectively with the rare incidents that might arise.

👉 For simplified management of your WordPress site, discover accommodation offers LRob and benefit from our expertise to avoid or solve technical problems and keep your site online, secure and performing.