Keeping Your Website Upgraded Constantly Is Important

 

Technology is rapidly changing and because of it, your site should be upgraded to latest "versions" as much as possible. Example, if your site was built on version v2.5 (the latest technology at the time) but now version v3.3 is out, you really should upgrade along with the versions. Why is this important? Below are some answers to questions you might have.

 

IF I DON'T UPGRADE, WILL MY SITE BE OK?

Yes and no! It will stay running just fine forever... until it doesn't! As server companies upgrade servers to run the latest technology, you could be stuck in the past and thus problems could arise in the future. You should be fine for a long time though.

 

CAN NEW FEATURES BE ADDED TO MY WEBSITE?

Yes and no! Yes, as long as that version is supported. Eventually the software version that your site was created in will have an "end of life" to it and thus upgrading new features into your site will be impossible. That's why it's important to keep your "framework" upgraded to new versions as they come out constantly.

You may always, eventually want to add some kind of new features to your site. Once your site is far enough out from the software version the site was originally built in, extensions become limited and developers of those extensions (that were purchased separately) end up dropping support. This is a bad thing.

 

CAN YOU AT CREATED4DESIGN UPGRADE IT FOR ME?

Yes, upgrades should be made by the developers in my opinion because they really know what went into the site in the first place and how to fix problems that may arise. If you try it yourself and then call upon the developer, we don't know what was exactly done so it might be hard to fix.

We will make backups before beginning any upgrading procedures in case something goes wrong. To get the process started you would just need to purchase some maintenance time from us explained HERE.

NOTE: you will / may be billed separately for extensions that need to be re-purchased because they are out of date.

 

CAN I MAKE UPGRADES MYSELF TO MY SITE?

It depends on how much time you let go by without upgrading it. If it's a short time of about a month or two, you can upgrade fairly easily. But there could be issues, let me explain. Your website is built with plugins / extensions added to it as well as the basic framework of the site. Although the "framework" may update easily, the extensions will/may be out of date and may not support the new "framework" upgrade. This means the newest versions of the plugins used in the website will need to be re-purchased and uploaded to fit the new version of framework.

 

OTHER HEADACHES FOR NOT UPGRADING

Your site can start to not do as well in the search engines and the lack of mobile support. As technology changes, these things change with it and your non-updated site was not able to handle it adequately or at current technology standards.

Web Hosts move on with software support. Because of this, at some point in time hosting your old version of your website will present a problem because it won’t be compatible with PHP and MySQL anymore. In some instances, there were hosting companies giving people just a week or two to migrate their site to a newer version or move their sites to another host thanks to an upgrade in PHP.

Hacked sites! This could happen due to core vulnerability due to not updating a third party extension vulnerability or just a bad super admin or FTP password. Let us say your site got hacked because of an outdated “extension” and you have an older version of framework. Now there is no way to update that extension because it is no longer supported and though the site was backed up and re-implemented, it’s only a matter of time until it will get hacked again at this point.

 

AND THE MORAL OF THE STORY IS...

It's worth it to keep it updated.

 

By: Created4design

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We are a web design / marketing company Located in Orange County California. We specialize in small to medium business websites solutions.