Did WordPress's Automatic Update Break Your Site?

Have you ever opened your email and saw a message like this?

If you haven’t seen this email, then most likely you have something like define( 'WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', false ); in your wp-config.php file which will disable WordPress’s automatic updates.   If you have seen this email then at least you can be confident that your WordPress Core is up to date but can you be confident that your website is still working properly?

Time To Check On My Website

Once you see that email message the first thing you do (or should do) is open up your website to check on it to make sure everything is working and looking normal.  After clicking through a bunch of pages in detail you find everything seems good.  Great news, you dodged another bullet!  What if everything isn’t working and looking normal?  Error messages at the top of the page, broken layouts, plugins stop functioning correctly and the white screen of death can happen if your theme, plugins and core are not all up to date.  Even if they are you can still have issues depending on your theme and your plugins and how quickly the developers have updated them to be compatible with the new WordPress core.

My WordPress Website Is Broken.  What Should I do?

If you website is broken the first thing you should do is see if your host, developer or YOU have properly setup automatic backup’s of your website’s files and database. What’s that you say?  You do not have any backup’s configured?  That’s a major NO NO.  Now your site could be broken for few days before you figure out what is wrong or find someone else fix the problems.

How Could I Have Avoided This?

The best way to avoid downtime, and issues like these is to have a WordPress Maintenance Plan in place.  These plans will keep your WordPress core, plugin’s and themes up to date.  Automated daily backup’s, security monitoring, security scans and database optimization also come with any of these plans which will keep your website healthy and running smoothly.

 

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