Is updating website software a chore?
Do you feel the pain of updating website software? Does it make you nervous because you're afraid that it may break something on your website? Are you concerned that you may not be going about it the right way? When was the last time you worked on updating your website software? Be honest, have you been doing it at all?
The internet is a very fast paced component of everyone's life. It's exciting to see new technologies emerge, but it's also scary when we feel we're being left behind. One of the reasons it changes so quickly is that there is a constant battle behind the scenes between the software developers and the hacking community. Hackers love to hack into websites for a number of reasons. To do so, they constantly pick away at the programming code that makes up various websites. Eventually they find a way to break in and wreak havoc. On the other side, the software developers are working just as furiously to modernize their code to patch up the vulnerabilities that the hackers have gained access to. It's a never-ending battle.
This is the reason why every piece of software today has updates released by the developers on a constant basis. Updating website software is so important, that some companies used to release updates one a month, then once a week, but now almost all the software developers are releasing software updates in real time. That means that as soon as they have completed a fix for a known vulnerability, it's released via the internet. We have seen some software developers releasing updates multiple times per week!
Do I need to install the updates right away, or can I wait?
Updating website software needs to be done immediately! The problem is that there is already a huge amount of time that passes between when the hackers break in, and when the corresponding fix is released by the software developers. This timeframe can easily be six months or more, depending on the circumstances involving the complexities of the hack. If you push off updating website software because you simply feel it's inconvenient to take care of it on an ongoing basis, you're prolonging the window of opportunity that your website may be broken into.
As a result, your website software should be checked for updates on a daily basis, and you should be updating website software right away. Of course, sometimes updating website software may break your website, so be sure to make a complete backup of all your files, the databases, and any other components relating to your website and your hosting account in general. This gives you an opportunity to restore the backup in case the software updating caused any problems.
Read the rest of the article on our website at http://www.geckowebsites.com/how-often-should-i-be-updating-website-software/
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