Safely Updating WordPress

One of the most critical steps you can take in running a website is keeping it up-to-date with the latest WordPress and plugin updates. These updates come out fairly often and will be apparent by little “orange” circles within the admin bar. If you’re going to be updating your WordPress site yourself, a few things to consider are:

Understand your backups first: Having an understanding of your web hosting providers backup is the first step. Are they daily? Are you able to restore them? Some hosting providers offer minimal backups and if a ticket takes 24-48 hours to respond to, you may be overwriting good backups with bad backups before the provider can restore the site for you. Before you break something, spend a few minutes understanding your web hosts backups.
Setup local backups: These will be your go-to backups. Plugins such as BackupBuddy and Updraft are two great plugins that can run backups for you. The better hosting providers will not allow these plugins as they are resource intensive and create a large amount of disk usage storing backups. So check with your hosting provider and make sure they do allow backup plugins. Additionally, you will want to make sure that your backups do not put you over the disk quota. This isn’t usually an issue but on some older hosts it can be.
With a backup plan in place, do you have a staging area?: Does your web host offer a staging area? Many do and you can perform a test run of the updates in a safe staging area, review the website and if all is well, complete those steps on the live website.
Review the update notes: Many updates offer bug fixes and security updates which are fantastic. Others provide significant functionality increases and should be upgraded to cautiously. Make a list of the plugins that you are updating so that you can keep track of the changes
Give it a whirl: While we perform our updates in test environments after reading the release notes for the updates, end users are generally ok to upgrade in place with a backup on hand. In the end, if something is broken, the site can be restored. If the upgrade is completed successfully (as they usually are), your website is safer because of it.

We’re not advocating for just logging in and clicking update and upgrading in place but customers who may not be on our care plan, upgrades are generally safe to complete and it would be better to keep the site updated than to take no action at all.

As far as scheduling goes, we would suggest performing WordPress, Plugin and Theme file updates on a monthly basis. Just set a calendar event with some notes and links to backup/restore resources!

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Brittany Mathisen

2023-09-27

OTM has been a wonderful marketing partner for the last four years. We have shifted marketing plans over time and they are very open and explained all the details as we moved forward with new plans. They have done everything from help design and update offices, managed social media, planning marketing events, and many more things. The Hear for Holidays Event that we do each year is one of my favorite events that we work on together. Rachel and the whole OTM team have brought my marketing vision to life and I love everything they have done for my business. I look forward to what the future holds as we continue to work together.

Yvonne Myers

2023-07-30

I worked with Old Town Media (OTM) on a quick grant project that had a 6-week timeline. They were very thoughtful about whether they could meet the grant expectations and needs before accepting the work. The team at OTM then completed extensive research and facilitated focus groups to ensure the product they created met the needs of the end-users. They met all of the grant deadlines and far exceeded our expectations of the portal they created for us! I would not hesitate to use their services again and highly recommend them to others looking for a professional, high quality, and FUN team to work with.

Julie Dokoupil

2023-07-18

OTM is a locally owned firm that I have worked with for over 13 years. They are an amazing team of people who know and understand current marketing technology and strategies. My husband and I are starting a new business and they have helped us out even with small details to get our business going.

TunDesign

2023-06-20

I have seen a significant increase in community engagement which has helped bolster our brand presence, exceeding the expectations of the entire team. Carrie and her team provides consistent communication through slack and emails which has led to an effective and trusted partnership. Truly appreciate how hard-working, agile, and driven everyone on the team is. Thanks again for eveything your team has done for our company.

David Haase

2023-06-07

OTM has done a fantastic job bringing the Fort Collins Peach Festival back to the public! OTM is dealing with several volunteers on a committee and keeping everyone informed, best in business advice and a platform that will serve us for years. We didn't know what we needed and were presented with choices and educated about each before implementation. Kerrie and Brianna have done great work for us! Dave Haase Committee Chair Fort Collins Peach Festival

Dana Sednek

2023-03-15

Using their Path to Growth Model, OTM not only gave me a path forward, but they helped me clarify my strategy, direction, and actions for how to set and launch my business. I was able to launch quickly and I see the flywheel ahead that is necessary to accelerate customer intake and revenue building. Thrilled with the outcome!!!

Liza Adams

2023-01-13

As the Head of Marketing at Encompass Technologies, I considered Old Town Media an extension of our marketing team. OTM worked closely with us on rebranding and repositioning, multiple industry-first product launches, key industry events, and integrated demand generation campaigns while we grew our marketing team and acquired new companies. With the help of OTM, we grew our pipeline and bested industry benchmarks for Software as a Service (SaaS) sales and marketing efficiency metrics. We came to rely on OTM for tactical execution to augment our team but where they added the most value was in our rebranding strategy and market positioning efforts. OTM played an integral role in conducting research and deeply understanding our market dynamics, ideal customer profile, customer challenges, competitive landscape, products and innovation, key differentiators, vision, and mission. This was no easy feat with a highly complex ecosystem, multiple segments, wide variety of audiences, and a broad array of products. Armed with market insights, OTM helped us develop a compelling brand, an inspirational story reflecting our vision and strategy, a unique and defensible market position, and messaging that was relevant to our target audiences. I appreciated that the team was respectful and empathetic, intently curious, insightful with their observations and recommendations, and candid with their feedback. OTM set realistic expectations about deliverables/scope, level of effort, roles, timeline, and cost. The team was responsive, highly collaborative, and open to suggestions. OTM plugged our expertise and resource gaps which allowed us to break the compromise between doing good work and doing it quickly. On top of that, they were fun to work with. OTM was truly a partner of the business.

Eric Dengler

2023-01-11

Great team! Small company service. Big firm power and expertise.

zach fulton

2023-01-06

Simply put, OTM is a well oiled machine! Thanks for all you do

Safely Updating WordPress

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