When you purchase a vehicle, you are responsible for the maintenance after you drive it off the lot. The same applies to a website, once it’s posted live on the internet, it needs to be maintained. Many of us don’t not have the time, specialized skills, tools, or interest in maintaining our car – or our website.
Like car thieves, hackers are always on the prowl for vulnerable websites. Lately, they have been picking on sites developed on the WordPress platform. It is one of the most popular programs. As of February 2015, there were more than 60 million WordPress sites in use.
If you have a WordPress site, you most likely have third-party plugins to extend functionality which require updates on a periodic basis. In addition, all your site content and data is stored in a database. If your site has not been kept up to date with software and plug-in updates, it’s prone to hackers. And your site could be even more susceptible if the hosting service you are using is not on top of current security standards and threats. If your site is hacked and a backup has not been made by the host, it’s likely that your site could be infected, or worse, unable to be restored to its pre-hacked state.
Think of keeping your website up to date like buying insurance. You don’t want to get caught without it. The minimal monthly cost is worth it.