Nobody updates your WordPress site. Who owns that job?

Nobody has touched your website’s dashboard since it was built.

You haven’t either.

There is a button in there that says “Update.” It has been waiting for months.

If your site runs on WordPress, log in today and see what is pending. You don’t have to click anything yet. Just look.

What happens when nobody updates your site?

What happens to anything nobody checks: nothing, right up until the day something does.

Today WordPress released version 7.1.3. According to WordPress News, it is a security and maintenance release with 7 security fixes and 4 bug fixes, and its advice is plain: “Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately.” One of the problems it fixes let anyone, without logging in, see comments on private and unpublished posts. The source only lists the flaw. It does not say anyone took advantage of it, or how many sites it touched.

Your site is not a flyer you print once and hand out. It is a machine with parts that need patching every so often, and somebody has to own that job.

The dangerous part is not this week’s flaw. It is that nobody in your business knows the job is theirs.

Who built it? An agency, a nephew, a vendor who stopped answering messages. Who updates it today? If the answer is “nobody,” you already have the problem, and you can fix it without knowing anything about computers.

What are the three ways to handle it?

Pick one this week. There are three, and none of them is free.

Path one: you do it when you remember. You open the dashboard, click “Update,” and hope nothing moves out of place. It is the cheapest in money and the most expensive in attention. It works for as long as you remember, and you have a business to run. It is slow and it is fragile.

Path two: you pay someone to watch it. A person or an agency checks your site on a regular basis and tells you what they found. It is the calmest option, but it is a payment that never ends, and it is only worth it if they actually do the work. Ask them how often they check.

Path three: a site that does not need patches all the time. The fewer third-party pieces your site has, the less there is to watch. It does not eliminate maintenance, but it turns it into something you can plan instead of something that ambushes you.

A site moves at the pace you tend to it, just as Google has no delivery time for your changes, and maintenance is no exception.

Which one fits? It depends on how much it hurts if your site breaks for a day, and how much time you have. A business that takes its appointments through the site cannot go with path one. A small shop that uses its site as a business card maybe can.

What if my site updates itself?

It might. According to the same post, sites that support automatic background updates will begin updating on their own.

It only applies to sites that support them. The rest are updated by hand from the dashboard.

So do not settle for “surely it updates itself.” Find out whether yours does. It is a one-line question for whoever built it: “Are automatic updates turned on for my site?” If you get a runaround, you have learned something.

And even if they are on, somebody should open the site afterward and check that it still works: that the form sends messages, that the contact button goes where it should. An automatic update fixes parts. It does not tell you if something moved.

Think of the door to your shop. It locking itself at night tells you nothing about what happened inside.

What do I do this week?

Three questions, in this order:

1. Does my site use WordPress? Ask whoever built it, or log in to your dashboard and see whether it says so.
2. Who updates it? One name. If the answer is “nobody” or “I think my nephew,” it counts as “nobody.”
3. Are automatic updates turned on? Yes, no, or “I don’t know.” “I don’t know” is also an answer.

If the answer to “who” is nobody, pick one of the three paths before Friday. It does not have to be the perfect one. It has to be somebody’s job.

If you have nobody to do your maintenance

At Mexicoware we can help you update your WordPress site. And if you would rather not lie awake at 3 a.m. wondering whether a new flaw has come out, we build you a website and take care of maintaining it.

Tell us what site you have today, through the contact form or on WhatsApp, and we will quote it.

A site with no maintenance owner is not finished. It is just waiting its turn.