Introduction to how to manage plugin updates
In this digital age, 252,000 websites are added daily. Many of these sites are created by developers/designers and all require maintenance, a part is to manage plugin updates. In this blog, we explain how you can gain and maintain control over running WordPress plugin updates. This can be quite difficult if you manage multiple websites or just do maintenance alone.
Why you should update everything
A website is built for long-term use 99% of the time. This means that security and support are two very important components to consider.
Hackers also innovate over time, so you want to stay ahead of them at all times. Even if you think, I don’t process much sensitive information, it’s still important. You could lose your website, or it could be used to hack your customers. If this happens, it’s not only annoying for your customers but also a complicated legal matter.
Besides security, you should also consider outdated coding techniques used under the hood of your website, which could be WordPress itself or your themes or plugins. Therefore, make sure you maintain this regularly.
Automatic scripts or plugins
WordPress has offered a feature to automate plugin updates since WordPress 3.7, what should help you to manage plugin updates easier and ensuring better security. However, in practice, this often doesn’t work because updates can introduce errors/conflicts, potentially breaking your website without you realizing it for a long time.
There are also scripts and plugins available that could perform this task, such as the Companion Auto Update plugin. This offers more options than the standard WordPress functionality, such as: notifying you when something goes wrong, setting an update time, and an update log for debugging.
Yet, a plugin or script can’t always distinguish what is a good update to do right away, prevent conflicts between plugins, or avoid unnecessarily breaking the layout. Therefore, we generally advise against automatic updates, but it could be an option if you find it less important.
Monitor plugin updates
Besides plugins and other methods that automatically update plugins or themes, there are also tools you can use to know which updates are available on which site. This saves you from having to log in to each site you manage, as this is a time-consuming process.
An example of a plugin that does this is ManagedWP. This plugin is not only for updating plugins but also for uptime and other insights of your websites. You can also log into all your connected sites without logging in with your username and password on the wp-admin page through the external panel, which makes updating much more efficient.
How often is necessary
Generally, the answer is as often as possible. Yet, the most common frequency is once a month, which is often sufficient. Opening your WordPress site(s) every day is not an option, especially if you manage multiple sites at once. Therefore, once a month is a good option but does not always ensure security because there are updates that have priority. The ManagedWP plugin is also very useful in this area as it often identifies when an update that needs to be done quickly is available and notifies you.
Tips to run/ manage plugin updates
Always running all updates is not always the right option. This is because conflicts and bugs often emerge that were not noticed by the developers’ tests. Therefore, it helps to first test major plugin updates on one installation and carefully review the changelog if available. It’s even more important to keep a closer eye on sites that process a lot of sensitive content. An example is a webshop, where a lot of information is processed, and you obviously never want this info to be exposed.
Plugins like WooCommerce sometimes have a major update (for example, from 7.6 to 8.0, example changelog down below). Wait a week to update if the update doesn’t have a security priority. It often happens that there are bugs or conflicts, which are usually patched within a short time. If these patches don’t come within a week, I recommend doing the update anyway.
Changelog WooCommerce from 7.6 to 8.0
Conclusion
For us, the best, most efficient, and highest quality solution to manage plugin updates the right way is to log in monthly and do an update round if you manage fewer than 5 websites. If you have more than 5, we recommend looking for a management plugin that meets your requirements.
Check the changelog and for major updates thoroughly test them, and let the major updates that don’t have a security priority wait a week until patches are available, and if not, install the update anyway. When we update one our plugins, like Resize Control, we also provide every change in our changelog.