Why should you consider a plan?
1. Security – If there weren’t bad guys out there constantly coming up with malicious code that threatens to attack your site, this wouldn’t be necessary. But unfortunately, there are. And they are constantly coming up with new attacks, so the good guys have to keep coming up with updates to help protect you.
If you do not keep your website and plugins up-to-date, you run the risk of getting attacked by one of these malicious bots. The longer you wait between updates, the more at risk you become.
What do these attacks look like? Sometimes it’s something you can’t see until your website is shared on social media, and then you see some vulgar language (which you would probably rather not have associated with your brand). Other times, your site may suddenly look really weird and distorted. And the worst attacks could take or delete data from your site.
2. Performance – Over time, WordPress and plugin authors release updates that not only patch new security vulnerabilities, but also improve the performance of your site and the plugins helping run it. (Things like bug fixes and code improvements.)
If you want to manage updating your site and plugins yourself, you can. However, when updates are processed, sometimes there are additional tweaks that are needed to keep everything working properly. It’s always good to make a backup of your database and any plugins or other files you are updating in case the updates break something and you need to revert back temporarily.
Note: As of Jan 1, 2017, if you are on a hosting plan with me, then you will also need to be on one of these plans. If you wish to self-manage your updates, you will need to move your website to your own hosting provider.
