I’m willing to bet that WordPress Maintenance and Security is something people most often neglect. In most cases for no reason other than that people don’t know how to manually upgrade to the latest version of wordpress. See, the WordPress upgrade cycle takes place somewhat regularly. On average a major software upgrade is released about (3) three times per year. Release cycles increase version numbers by .1 so it looks like this: WordPress 2.6, 2.7, 2.8, 2.9. Then, smaller security fixes are released and an additional digit is added to the version number. It looks something like this: WordPress 2.8.1, 2.8.2, 2.8.3, etc. Currently, we’re on version 2.9.2.
Upgrading WordPress
Whenever there’s a new release, you’ll see a notification in the Dashboard that looks something like this:
WordPress has an Automatic Upgrade Plugin that allows you to upgrade to the latest version of WordPress using a “simple on-click process.” But really, the process is of course anything but automatic as you still have to perform several steps in order to actually upgrade your site. And as always it’s recommended that you back-up your data before performing a maintenance upgrade. If you’re using the Automatic Upgrade Plugin successfully to update to the latest version of WordPress, good on you. For those of you that find it a little cumbersome and are still a little bit lost, that’s where Vaultpress comes in…
Vaultpress: Premium WordPress Backup Service from Automattic
Vaultpress comes to you from Automattic, the creators of WordPress. The service is still very much in Private Beta so you have to apply in order to use it. It’s actually kinda neat that they’re sending out “Golden Tickets” to selected applicants.
The service is simple. They’ll manage your blogs and any security/maintenance updates for you (from plugins to themes, etc.) including back-ups of your content. Furthermore, you’ll have real-time continuous monitoring of your site(s) for any security issues and upgrades. It seems they’re keeping the cost at ~$20 (though I’m not sure if that’s per blog or for all of your blogs under one account). Either way, for the non-techie, it seems like a worthwhile investment.
Sometimes, it’s best to have someone else manage your security upgrades than spending the time trying to figure out how to do it yourself. Don’t you think?
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