In today’s world and after the pandemic, every organization’s or company’s web presence is as important as its physical presence, and its website acts as an online formal representation of business. Weather it is a corporate website or an e-shop there is a big possibility to use the WordPress as your Content Management System (CMS) as, according to research by W3Techs, WordPress is used by 39.5% of all websites, and around 64.1% of all sites with a known content management system.

However, setting up a WordPress website is not a “set it and forget it” project. It needs maintenance to keep it running and tracking the technology’s evolution.

Why a WordPress Maintenance Plan?

Simplicity, Ease of Access and Flexibility are the main axes that lead the WordPress to evolve into the web’s most popular Content Management System. However, this popularity also means that WordPress website owners need to be extra watchful in maintaining their website and all its components to keep it “live” and functional.

Security

As a very well-known superhero stated, “With great power comes great responsibility”, so since WordPress is the Content Management System of the 39.5% of the websites globally, immediately becomes a common target for attackers.

Imagine one day you access your website, and the browser prevents the access as the website is reported as “malicious” or unsafe. Or even worse, attackers take control of your site and deface your site, severely damaging your company’s brand and reputation.

Fortunately, thwarting the majority of these security concerns can be prevented by simply keeping your website up to date.

It is not just the core!

Keeping your website’s WordPress core updated is the first line of defense, but the 90% of WordPress sites use a significant number of plugins by third party vendors that are equally vulnerable to attacks and their update task should be treated with the same manner and frequency as the WordPress core.

A Hosting Plan is Not a WordPress Maintenance Plan

Every website needs hosting, and hosting plans come in all variations to adapt to every budget – from low budget shared hosting, to fully managed dedicated servers. In most cases, these plans come with some level of maintenance and administration from your hosting provider such as routine software patches, and upgrades, or firewall monitoring. However, what is important to understand is that the “maintenance” of the server/hosting environment is a separate set of tasks and a totally different project from the maintenance of your WordPress website. The server’s maintenance is pointed to secure and optimize the server’s side. A secure and updated server does not presuppose a secure website.

Why maintenance should be performed by developers.

Compatibility & User Experience

Apart from security considerations, also consider that most WordPress sites make use of plugins that are developed and maintained by third party vendors. Depending on how vigilant the plugin developer is with their updates, compatibility issues can arise with each new WordPress core update and a quality assurance testing must be performed after each update to ensure that nothing “breaks” and that performance does not get affected in a way that will impact users.

Somebody would say, “No problem, I will restore my latest backup and my website will be fine again!”. Assuming that you have everything, it takes to accomplish such a task, you do it successfully and everything is back to normal. The next question is “And now what? For how long you will leave your website outdated waiting for the plugin’s developer to release an update?” and only the plugin’s vendor knows the answer. An experienced developer could find a way to tackle such a bug in a matter that will not affect the rest of the website, till the plugin’s update is released without rolling back the website.

Server Technologies

It is important to mention that the technologies which WordPress uses (such as PHP and MySQL) are also subject to changes. The WordPress team keeps tracking those changes releasing updates that make WordPress compatible with the technologies’ updates. This is another reason that you should update the version of WordPress on your site. For example, if you are running WordPress using an old version of PHP or MySQL, or if they have not installed the proper security patches, then your hosting environment may become incompatible with WordPress and your site may stop running. Or worse, it could continue to run but with a low performance and to a host with back-door security vulnerabilities.

Customizations

WordPress websites can vary, not only in terms of appearance, but in terms of configuration and functionalities. Most WordPress websites are a combination of third-party plugins, themes, and various configurations achieved using custom code or custom developed plugins. Each WordPress website is typically further customized to meet the unique needs of each customer.

While WordPress makes it very easy for users to update basic content, such as posts or other page content, the time will come where you’ll need a WordPress developer’s touch. Eventually you will want to – or need to – change something that is a little more behind the scenes, such as modifying input fields on a page, or a customization to a theme functionality or a template, basically anything that relies on changing or creating custom code.

Conclusion

Maintenance Plan rather than Emergency Plan

Preventive Maintenance plan is your best “weapon” against any unwanted surprises with your website and to keep it running smoothly. But even with best efforts unanticipated situations may arise and at that time you need a reliable and experienced partner to take care of the “hot potato” and handle the situation as soon as possible. At that time, you should not be in a situation of unsuccessful attempts to reach your partner or – even worse – searching to find a partner while your website is nonfunctional, your visitors are facing problems and your reputation is suffering. At Creative People we provide monthly maintenance plans as known as WordPress Care Packs for any WordPress website, contact us to learn more about our WordPress Care Packs.

Building a website is not only a developer’s project; It needs a lot of contribution and time investment from the owner as well. Considering the investment to set it up and running it; consider the investment to keep it that way.

On August 28^th, 00:45 GMT+2 a major attack on WordPress websites was carried out. Many WordPress sites had their admin account renamed. We managed to block the attack on its early beginning and monitor the procedure carried out using honeypots. An upgrade to all WordPress sites to latest version 5.5 hosted on our datacenters was carried out within 12 hours.

 

This week, the popular WordPress CMS has received a major upgrade – WordPress 5.5.1 – which fixes issues that caused problems on millions of websites around the world.

 

WordPress.org has published new information explaining why version 5.5. of WordPress has negatively affected millions of websites and states that the new software upgrade, WordPress 5.5.1, acts as a patch (maintenance release). This announcement is accompanied by links to Excel spreadsheets that pinpoint the specific issue affecting each plugin and theme, which is expected to help developers update faster.

 

WordPress 5.5.1 Maintenance Release September 1, 2020

 

The “maintenance version” was designed to protect websites from cracking, but that does not mean that problems are solved. The announcement emphasizes to developers having till March 2021 to fix problems arising from the termination of support for specific global JavaScript objects brought by version 5.5 of WordPress. Failure of developers to make timely corrections will result in problems again on the affected websites.

“The plan is to remove this code in the next major version of WordPress, so it will be deleted in WordPress 5.7. This gives plugin and theme developers enough time to remove the problematic code and switch to using wp.i18n,” the statement says.

 

Millions of pages are affected

 

As mentioned above, the relevant announcement incorporates a link to a spreadsheet with information. The file reveals the previously unknown number of sites affected. Initially, the impact was relatively small and limited to a few thousand sites, which proved to be completely inaccurate. Eventually, WordPress 5.5 negatively affected millions of websites, which is why the relevant maintenance release (5.5.1) was released urgently.

 

Popular affected plugins

• SiteOrigin Widgets Bundle (+1 million users)
• Advanced Custom Fields (+1 million users)
• Ninja Forms Contact Form (+1 million users)

 

Partial list of plugins affected by WordPress 5.5.

• WordPress Gallery Plugin – NextGEN Gallery
• Polylang
• Child Theme Configurator
• Simple Custom CSS and JS
• Toolset Types – Custom Post Types, Custom Fields and Taxonomies
• Max Mega Menu
• WP AutoTerms: Privacy Policy Generator, Cookie Notice Banner, Terms & Conditions Generator
• YITH WooCommerce Wishlist
• Ocean Extra
• WordPress SEO Plugin – Rank Math
• Meta Box – WordPress Custom Fields Framework
• Hummingbird – Speed Optimize, Cache, Minify & Defer Critical CSS & JavaScript
• Content Views – Post Grid & List for WordPress

 

Popular themes affected:

• Astra +1 million users
• Storefront +200,000 users
• Hestia +100,000 users
• Neve +100,000 users
• ColorMag +100,000 users
• Customizr
• Hueman
• Zakra

 

The above changes need to be addressed and updates on WordPress core and code need to be made on all WordPress websites.

In Creative People we provide managed hosting services so as to get peace of mind.

See more here