With any site built on WordPress, there are three major components that regularly get updated. There is WordPress itself, the theme or themes installed and the plugins. If they are not all updated in a timely manner, problems could arise. We recently saw evidence of this on a couple of sites.

A client contacted us about an order placed in their online store. On a specific order, the wrong amount of shipping was charged. We investigated the shipping rates on their site and it had all the right info so there was something else causing the issue. Anytime we go into the back end of a site for a client, we take the time to install any available updates.

On this shopping site, we tried a few sample orders and couldn’t re-create the problem. Why had the problem happened the first time? Quite simply it was because the plugin for the shopping cart hadn’t been updated recently.

While visiting another site recently, we ran into an issue with the business directory. We could search the directory, but the page would not scroll on the results page. This was great for whichever business was listed first, but really bad for anyone else. As this wasn’t a site we built, we contacted the business to let them know about the problem. It was fixed within an hour and it turned out the problem was a plugin that needed updating.

Making sure a site is updated regularly was the driving force behind our decision to offer maintenance packages. We wanted to make the entry-level package as inexpensive as possible and our Bronze package does handle the updates described above. For clients that was more service, we offer Silver, Gold and Platinum packages with increasing levels of services.

Clients can choose to do the updates themselves. Some do visit their site regularly and keep things updated. We find that most don’t. They can choose to have it done when other changes are made, though often this ends up costing more. Lastly, they can choose a maintenance package that install updates very regularly so that everything runs smoothly.