As one of the most popular website platforms, WordPress powers the marketing efforts of individuals, small businesses, and large companies on the Internet. Its ease of use and extensibility make it a natural choice for people who desire to have a presence on the Web, but who lack the technical and programming skill to build a site from scratch. But it’s this lack of technical ability that makes WordPress websites open to security breaches and other attacks that threaten to destroy companies that fail to keep their WordPress installations updated.

One of the greatest benefits of the WordPress platform is how regularly it is updated. With each new release, security holes are patched, usability issues are addressed, and new plug-ins and other functionality make WordPress easier to use than ever before. However, if you don’t update your WordPress installation, you leave yourself open to hackers who will exploit these security holes to take control of your website, access confidential customer information, and essentially bring your website to a grinding halt. The time spent recovering from just one such incident can stretch into days and weeks – which takes a serious toll on your productivity and revenue. In the worst case, you’ll lose valuable data that can’t be recovered from a backup, crippling your ability to continue operations.

In addition to the critical issue of security, upgrading your WordPress installation also gives you access to the latest and greatest versions of plug-ins that you may rely on to drive your website’s functionality. While your plug-ins may continue to work under your old WordPress installation, they may lack newer features, and getting support for your plug-ins under previous WordPress versions may be problematic.For these reasons, it’s critical to make sure that your website’s server is running the latest version of WordPress, which is a task that’s best left to a professional. A number of issues may arise during the upgrade process, and only a professional who has experience in upgrading WordPress installations will have the expertise to distinguish small issues from showstoppers. An experienced and knowledgeable WordPress professional will know how to create a backup of your existing data, ensure against corrupted databases, and verify that all of your plug-ins are updated and working as they should be.