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phillycodehound@lemmy.world

WordPress update model? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 month ago by Buildout@lemmy.world to c/wordpress@lemmy.world

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I manage a WordPress site hosted on SiteGround for a friend. The website keeps going down due to updates of some sort or another, and I'm trying to resolve this issue.

SiteGround forces major and minor auto-updates at least every 3 days (if available), and offers the option to autoupdate plugins (which I have on). Inside of the WordPress admin page, none of the plugins are set to auto-update, and I can see some offering to update individually/manually.

My question is this: what is the intended update model for WordPress? Should I just set everything to autoupdate to the extent possible? Although I'm facing issues now, my other software experiences tell me this is a bad idea. I'm used to "update when you want or need a new feature, but nothing will break if you don't", but is this just not how WordPress was designed?

Thanks!

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[–] ByteOnBikes 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

As a developer, yes. Ive been working in web dev for a decade, but have been a engineer for two decades.

When I joined my job, they were maintaining WordPress sites that were built in 2012 and hasn't been touched since. When I updated them to the latest WordPress, nothing broke. The WP team (which is also open-source) are fantastic at ensuring they don't break the internet. The major problems was security issues and plugins no longer being supported. But in terms of functionality, it was pretty solid.

Treat your WordPress site like you would a phone, a OS, a TV. It's something that has a window of 5-10 years. You can absolutely use it longer, but you will start to see it degrade. And in 5-10 years, it might be faster to spin up a brand new site than it is to patch your site up over and over.

[–] Buildout@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Thanks for the insight. Just to be clear, your suggestion is: auto-update as much stuff as possible and don't worry about it?

[–] ByteOnBikes 3 points 1 month ago

Yeah totally.

Also since you're using WordPress, get a backup plugin like WP backup and have it back up every week to a free Dropbox or Google drive. (Uncertain if they still do free auto uploads).

I would not recommend using only your web provider's backup tool.