Episode 121: How We Do WordPress Updates
Show Notes
Episode 121 How We Do WordPress Updates
00:00
Hey guys, Rob Cairns here. I’m the founder, CEO and Chief creator of amazing ideas that stunning digital marketing. In today’s podcast, I want to sit down and share with you something really special. And that is the whole how I do backups and WordPress updates. So I’m going to share that. So sit back, relax, grab your favorite drink, and listen to this really important podcast.
00:35
Hey, everyone, Robert Cairns here again. So today’s podcast, I really want to spend some time talking about how, as an experienced security guy, I update websites. And I think it’s really important. And this comes on the heels of WordPress dropping version 5.6. So normally, I would wait for the weekend to put this podcast out. But you know, at this point of this recording, five, six came out last night. So I want to share with a couple things. One of the things I always do is I take a quick look in the forums and see if there’s anything going on. Then the other thing I’ll do is I’ll take the WordPress update, and I’ll throw it on a test site. And I usually will update that test site. And it’s got a variety of plugins, typically for us the Aveda theme and a few other things. And that will make any issues pretty quickly. Then what I’ll do is I’ll make sure I take a backup of every site, I’m going to upgrade. And at this point in time, that’s over 50 of them for us. So what backto sites up, I’ll actually store those backups, you know, in a in a spot that is offline, so I’ve got them. And then I’ll start updating sites. And the way I’ll update the site is I’ll do the WordPress theme first, then the plugins after and then any themes after so that’s the WordPress core, I meant not the theme, the plugins. And then the themes after it’s typically the order, I will do sites. And then I’ll test them two ways. One, can I log into the backend of the site? To when I log into the backend? Can I edit a post or a page? And three, not only can I edit a poster page, but just a site look okay, on the front end, and I’ll take a quick look as an overview on what’s going on. And then when that’s done, I’ll usually do two things. One, send an email to all my clients saying this has been done. Here’s a copy of the release notes. And if you have any questions, please let me know. And the second thing, I’ll send them my clients. Besides that is a newsletter, I’ll send out saying to all the people on my newsletter, because some of our clients and some are not clients say, by the way, WordPress 5.6 is out. For example, here’s a highlight of some of the features and the things in WordPress 5.6. And besides that, if you need any help, please reach out to me. And I always get people reaching out because people, frankly, are not sure how to handle website updates. Now, I know a lot of developers for five, six will wait to 5.6 point one. I know several of them, that’s up to them. I usually don’t take that approach. Partly, the reason being is there’s a mirror of security issues, usually in each upgrade. And frankly, I like to get the security issues in sooner than later before the flaws are known out in the wild. And for my clients. That’s a bit of an issue. If I have to roll back one or two individually, I will do that. But frankly, at the end of the day, that’s usually how I handle the updates. So for me, that’s the key. That’s how I do them. I’ve been doing them for a long time. And frankly, the secret sauce works really well. But really the key is do a backup. Don’t wait for your host to do that backup. Do it yourself. Updraft Plus backup buddy duplicator choose your poison and just get it done. And that’s the key and keep your site’s up to date. And don’t wait for your regular update cycle. So in my case my update
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