WordPress is continually changing and advancing itself with upgrades. It’s important to keep up with these updates in order for your WordPress site to function at optimal performance.  However, before you install any new versions or updates, remember the following:

1. Back  Up! – Your Web host should be backing up your site daily, but that is truly for emergencies and should be considered a last resort.  Back up the database as well as your site theme, plug-ins and uploads (primarily images).  Our site core for 2011 comes with tools to run these back-ups for you automatically.  Let us know if you would like them added to your site.

2. Disable Plug-ins – Every now and then a plug-in hasn’t been updated to work with the latest version of WordPress, and that can cause problems. Doing this is pretty simple: just go to the “Manage Plugins” page in your dashboard, change the “Bulk Actions” pull-down menu to “Deactivate” and click “Apply.”

3. Start updating! There are a couple different ways to do this:

• If you have a current version of WordPress (2.7+), you can do an automatic update. If your site is due for an upgrade, there will usually be a yellow banner at the top of your dashboard reminding you to install the latest version. Just click on this banner to begin the update. If you don’t see a banner, go to the “Tools” page and click “Upgrade.”
• If the automatic upgrade doesn’t work for you, try a manual update. Click here for step-by-step directions.

Keeping your WordPress site up-to-date is important, and while it is simple enough to do on your own, we can certainly do it for you. Just let us know!