It is important to keep your WordPress installation updated for many reasons.  Security is at the top of the list.  Updating your plugins, themes, and core files to the latest versions is the best thing you can do to avoid security problems with your website.  In fact having your website fully updated is the single most important factor in preventing malicious activity.

WordPress comes with a feature called automatic updates built in.  When you first install WordPress minor core automatic security updates are set by default.  This means that any updates to the core files of WordPress will be automatically updated when they are released.  This is a great for security reasons and peace of mind.  If there is a security patch released the patch will automatically install without you having to do anything at all.

The default automatic updates are only the bare minimum of what is possible with the WordPress automatic update options.  There are other update features that come with WordPress that are not turned on by default.  You can turn these on programmatically or you can download a plugin that will allow you the flexibility to set all the options available.  The program I wrote and use is called L7 Automatic Updates.

L7 Automatic Updates allows you to choose which plugins you want to update and which ones you don’t.  This is a handy feature that I use on many sites I have inherited.

Keeping all of your plugins, themes, and core files updated to the latest versions not only keeps your site running smoothly, it is the greatest security measure you can take.

~ Layer7web