WordPress Security Issue - Keeping Your Websites Safe

byCarson

2.4M followers

Updated 10 years ago

Today I want to address a very common question that we get here at Wealthy Affiliate regarding updating their WordPress websites to the latest version.

"Should I update WordPress?"

The answer is YES and I'm going to get into the reasons for this below because there is a major security vulnerability that has been exploited in WordPress that there is a fix for in the lasted update.

First, how do you know if there is an update available?

Here is what it looks like when there is an update available:

To see if there is a newer version of wordpress available, all you need to do is login to your website back-office and look right at the top of the page. If you see a message saying that there is an update available, then you ABSOLUTELY want to update.

Click the "Please Update Now" link from your dashboard. Then you will see the following page where you can update:

Keeping your website up to date will help make sure that your website is working with the latest technologies, is compliant in all browsers, works on all mobile devices, and most importantly, is secure from known vulnerabilities.

Your websites that you build here at Wealthy Affiliate are "fully managed". There are few hosts out there that offer the kind of support that we do here at WA. Fully managed means that we are monitoring your website for performance, security, backing it up, and making sure that your site is running.

From time to time your site might have issues due to plugins, themes, or it could be attacked, but we're always on top of it and we know when issues arise.

Keeping your WordPress website up to date helps us and it helps your site stay current. You get the latest tools, the best layouts, and all the new features that are available.

Should I update WordPress?

As mentioned above, the answer is always a YES

Is it possible to run into problems?

On rare occasions you might run into a compatibility issue with an outdated plugin, but this is very rare and you can always rely on the fact that your site is Fully managed here at Wealthy Affiliate.

If you update WordPress and your site stops working as you would expect, then just create a support ticket to let us know and we'll help you with it. We'll find the problem, and give you a solution.

The worst thing you can do is leave your website to become out of date by not updating it when there are updates available.

A current WordPress security issue

Currently there is a wide scale attack to many wordpress websites out there for website running previous versions to 3.9.2. If you're not running 3.9.2, you're open to attack.

We have not experienced this on our Wealthy Affiliate network yet, but we expect that at some point some sites may come under attack as this is a very large scale attack that is happening out there to millions of sites.

Today we want you to log into your websites and update them to the latest version of WordPress which is version 3.9.2. While you're at it, if there are plugin or theme updates available you can do them at the same time.

Once you are updated, you are safe from this current attack that could happen. This attack could bring down your site entirely.

Help us spread the word!

If anyone asks about updating their website in the future, you can point them to this blog post, or you can just let them know that the answer is always "YES" when asking whether to update wordpress or not!

If you have any questions, please post them below.

I hope that you're having an awesome week!

Cheers,

Carson