WordPress Upgrades – To Keep Out Hackers

WordPress sites do need routine maintenance. Like a car, regular monthly or quarterly updates are needed to keep the site fast, secure, reliable. But the one-click upgrades of WordPress alone is never enough. WordPress coding itself is seldom the security problem. It’s very robust, causing less than 1% of hacked sites. To keep the site secure and error-free, we need to look at all the other things that were added to WordPress when the site was built. A study of hacked WordPress sites revealed:

  • 41% were hacked through a security vulnerability on their hosting platform
  • 29% were hacked via a security issue in the WordPress Theme they were using
  • 22% were hacked via a security issue in the WordPress Plugins they were using
  • 8% were hacked because they had a weak password

Note the small impact passwords has when they examined the causes of hacked sites.  If you read blogs written by ‘WordPress Experts’, they imply this is the major security issue. It isn’t.

One key thing we do is ensure the site has a suitable backup system. I’ve never found the backups provided by hosts to be useful and in 10 years have yet to use them, even though most hosts provide it as standard. If a hack occurs, hosts normally only keep the last few days, thereafter they can end up just backing up the hacked site files, which is of little use. If you’re on one of those cheap ‘unlimited’ plans, then speed, security and reliability is often not included. We may recommend you changing hosts in some cases. The one-click plugin upgrades are not always successful. Heavy duty ones like WooCommerce, Revolution slider, Visual composer plugins, can be a problem, often breaking stuff. Fixing these issues often requires expert help.

Our upgrade list:

  • Update WordPress Version
  • Update WordPress Plugins
  • Update theme files (if needed)
  • Daily backup of Database
  • Database Optimization
  • Weekly backup of all files
  • SPAM & Revisions Cleanup
  • Security and Performance Scans
  • Performance Optimization
  • Detailed Monthly Report

Costs? These can be quite modest, typically NZ$240/quarter. Sites using WooCommerce cart often need more upkeep than normal blogs or brochure sites. So, if your site is misbehaving, needing an upgrade and general tuneup to keep it secure, fast and reliable, give us a call.

Main Support Form

Scroll to Top