The rejection in the technology world is really strong and the life cycle of a trend is also shorter than you usually think. That’s the reason why WordPress is continuously updated with the new version that includes many fixes and maintenance. I have received a lot of questions from my customers from emails and comment about whether to update WordPress or not. Is it safe for the website? This article will be the answer for you.

I can say that WordPress is free and so cool to use with more than 30 million online users uses WordPress for their website. I affirm that the straight answer is you must update WordPress as soon as an update gets broadcast. If not, security will be in danger, features are all out-of-date. Let’s see what will be updated in the latest version:

  1. New exclusive features and bug fixes

When a new WordPress version is released, it will absolutely come with the newest features. For example, a recent version released includes the plugins to improve the UX of the admin screens as well as accessibility.

Besides that, with each minor release of WordPress (the ones with an X.X.X version number), the bug is fixed. Major releases tend to be very stable and bug-free thanks to the meticulous development cycle and the legions of people helping with testing, but sometimes a bug will slip through the net, and a minor release will come out to fix it.

  1. Security

Recent research has revealed that almost 58% of websites all over the world are powered by WordPress, even the notable giants such as BBC, Sony music, Play Station also trust on this platform. A CMS that powers up to a half of the internet will doubtless attract the attention of anyone wanting to insert malicious code, take sites down or steal data.

WordPress is known as open source so anyone can learn source code and improve it, you can, the hacker also can. Hackers can easily search for websites that run on the older version and if your website is one of not updated then, you can be a victim too. Therefore, the latest version updated security vulnerabilities are spotted and dealt with quickly. As my experience, when a security vulnerability comes to light in WordPress core or in a major plugin, developers and community will immediately find the way to fix and an update released straight away.

  1. Compatibility

After a major WordPress release, a lot of plugins will be updated as well to be compatible with that new version. However, in some cases, there are some plugins will not actually need to be updated cause they are still compatible with that version so the developer should check that it’s compatible and update its compatibility information which you see in the plugin repository.

One more thing is a new update might result in compatibility problems with another plugin, which is why it’s important to back up your site before updating. Therefore, I think the best solution to avoid conflict is getting as many of your plugins as possible from the same source.

  1. Speed

Speed is also a factor affecting your SEO ranking. Each millisecond of waiting means years for users. People The most impatient human on Earth is the mobile user. For each new version of Wordpress updated, developers put all efforts to make it become a blazingly fast platform. Don't forget to update to improve speed!