Updates are the core routine of a maintenance plan. Done properly they close security holes without breaking your site. Done carelessly they are the most common cause of a site going down.
Our process
- Review. We check what updates are pending and read changelogs for anything marked as a major release or a breaking change.
- Backup. A full backup of files and database before anything is touched, so there is always a rollback.
- Stage where available. Significant updates are applied and tested on a staging copy first.
- Apply in batches. Grouped rather than all at once, so if something breaks it is obvious what caused it.
- Test. Homepage, key content pages, contact forms, admin login, and checkout on e-commerce sites. Mobile and desktop.
- Report. A record of what was updated is available to you.
When we hold an update back
Sometimes not updating immediately is the right call. A major version release with known conflicts, or a plugin rewrite that changes how a feature works, is better held for a few days while the vendor issues the inevitable follow up patch. Security releases are never held back. If we hold something, it is a deliberate decision, not neglect.
When an update breaks something
We roll back to the backup, restore service, then diagnose the conflict in a staging environment rather than on your live site. Where a plugin has genuinely become incompatible, we tell you and recommend either an alternative or a small piece of development work to adapt.
Premium licences
Paid plugins and themes need active licences to receive updates. If a licence in your name lapses, updates stop arriving and the component becomes a growing risk. We will flag lapsed licences when we see them.
Please do not update in parallel
If you update plugins yourself between our cycles, tell us. Untracked changes make faults harder to attribute.
To ask about your update schedule, reply to your email thread or contact [email protected].
