Tag: wordpress updates

  • Why Updating Your WordPress Website Plugins and Versions Is Important?

    Why Updating Your WordPress Website Plugins and Versions Is Important?

    Expert Tips For Why Updating Your WordPress Website Plugins and Versions Is Important?

    Updates for a WordPress website are crucial to keeping your website safe and secure. WordPress has regular updates released by its team of developers, who ensure that their software is doing everything possible to prevent Viruses and Malware from infecting your site. Additionally, as WordPress changes over time, your website may begin to slow down or may not look how you want it to. Updates will help to make sure that you’re running a smooth and fast site. 

    Updates to WordPress help improve the user experience and make the platform more secure. Just like the updates for your apps and computers, these can help you discover new features, reduce problems, and maintain a positive user experience. Along with the website updates, plugins that run on your WordPress website are also being tested and updated as often as WordPress itself – possibly even more. 

    Keeping your WordPress website up to date isn’t hard, and it’s one of the easiest ways to increase your site’s security. If you don’t update regularly, you leave yourself and your users vulnerable to phishing scams, hacked websites, and more. 

    Why Are WordPress Updates So Important? 

    Updating your software once a month will give you the latest and greatest to help protect your device from bugs and security risks. When you don’t keep your software up to date, you may run into issues like slow performance, security concerns, and buggy behavior. If the software you’re using is outdated, your website and its features will not be able to support your business in the best way it can. You won’t be able to discover all the benefits you should be getting, so you’ll start to struggle with marketing your site, keeping track of leads, etc. 

    WordPress updates are released on a regular basis to provide security, solve problems, or introduce new features. Although these updates help our WordPress websites perform at the highest level possible for that period, developers from all over the world explore and experiment to find new ways to provide even greater security, solve bigger problems and introduce exciting new features. 

    With every new update, you will find that WordPress will give you new ways to customize your website, fix bugs a previous version may have caused, or provide protection against hackers. 

    Security & Bug Fixes 

    Many plugins contain security vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit, allowing access to your site or database. If hackers have compromised a plugin, they can use it as a gateway into your site and install malware or steal data. You may not even notice this until it’s too late! Developers can quickly fix bugs in their plugins if they are aware of them and have access to the codebase (or at least a copy). Therefore, updating regularly ensures that any issues identified can be fixed quickly without affecting too many sites at once. 

    Performance

    You might not realize this but over time, technology ‘evolves,’ and plugin authors update their plugins to take advantage of these changes. One of the benefits of these changes are the performance improvements. Plugins are often rewritten to make use of these changes and in general, they tend to be faster. 

    Enhanced Functionality

    As more websites install a plugin, the WordPress community begins to make suggestions for additional functionality for the plugin. The author then updates the plugin and releases a brand-new version with the additional changes included. When you update your plugins, you will gain access to the new functionality. 

    What Are the Most Important Things to Keep Updated?

    The WordPress platform, including the core software and plugins, will need to be updated regularly. Plugins are add-ons that provide more functionality for your website. Themes are a website’s design, which is updated via plugins. Some minor updates may make a big difference over time. 

    Do You Have a Good Backup?

    WordPress updates, in conjunction with a theme update or plugin update, will have conflicts. This is not uncommon, so it’s important that you back up all your files and databases so you can easily restore them once the update is complete.

    The Best Way to Keep Your WordPress Site Updated

    As a full-service web design and development agency, Agency Partner Interactive can keep your site up to date and so you won’t have to. Our dedicated team can monitor your sites 24/7, ensuring that they operate at peak performance, are updated, and stay bug-free. We offer comprehensive maintenance and support services so you can invest your time in developing other aspects of your business. 

    Keeping your WordPress website up to date with the latest software is critical for its performance and security. With the importance of keeping your WordPress site updated and performing to its best ability, you don’t want to miss a software update that could put you at risk for a security breach or interfere with your user’s experience. To learn more about what our hosting packages can do for your website and business, schedule your free consultation today!

  • Top 9 WordPress Admin Dashboard Themes and Plugins 2021

    Top 9 WordPress Admin Dashboard Themes and Plugins 2021

    Expert Tips For Top 9 WordPress Admin Dashboard Themes and Plugins 2021

    If you are reading this, you likely use WordPress. After all, over 40% of the websites on the internet are powered by WordPress.

    As open-source software, developers always create new WordPress themes and WordPress plugins to help website developers improve their communications and capabilities.

    With over 80,000 available WordPress themes and 12,000 WordPress plugins, it can be overwhelming to sift them all and decide which would be most useful for doing WordPress updates in 2021.

    At Agency Partner, we live with WordPress every day. Whether for our clients or ourselves, we are continually learning about new WordPress development to provide best practices for WordPress roadmaps for the sites we manage. Constant change and refinement are key to success in the digital world.

    As a service to our clients, we have sifted through thousands of WordPress updates for 2021 and narrowed them to the top 15 that we think will have the most impact. Of course, your situation might be unique and benefit from other WordPress theme updates or plugin updates. We can help you find those WordPress updates that are best for your particular objectives and strategies.

    Here are Agency Partner’s top 9 WordPress themes and plugin updates for 2021.

    1. Divi:

    Divi is the most popular WordPress theme provider in the world. It offers over 800 premade website layouts and 100 full website packages. Brand new layouts are added weekly, along with royalty-free photos, icons, and illustrations. Divi offers a wide array of WordPress themes that cover almost any need, eCommerce, business information, events, and health.

    2. WordFence Security:

    WordFence is one of the most popular WordPress plugins. It is built from the ground-up for WordPress security. Wordfence includes an endpoint firewall and malware scanner that was built from the ground up to protect WordPress. As part of your WordPress roadmap to success, Threat Defense Feed arms Wordfence with the newest firewall rules, malware signatures, and malicious IP addresses it needs to keep your website safe. Rounded out by a suite of additional features, Wordfence is the most comprehensive security option available. If you deal in the digital world, you know the importance of cybersecurity. Every site needs protection from hacking and other kinds of security issues. WordFence is a comprehensive security plugin for self-hosted WordPress sites that helps with malware scanning. The plugin includes a firewall with multiple security features, as well as protection from viruses and malware. WordFence also does real-time traffic monitoring and sends email alerts about critical security concerns.

    3. Astra:

    Astra is a modern WordPress theme designed to create any website. It works with all the popular drag and drops page builders seamlessly. The theme comes with several starter sites that you can use to launch your website quickly. These ready-made websites are perfect for small businesses, startups, blogs, and WooCommerce stores. Astra has tons of unique features, including page headers, mega menu, multiple layout choices, Google Fonts, unlimited color customization options, separate blog page layouts, and custom widgets. Plus, Astra offers powerful integration with the WooCommerce plugin to create an online store. Their WooCommerce theme includes infinite scrolling, quick product view, shop page, product gallery, and cart options.

    It also integrates with popular learning management systems like LearnDash. Astra has built-in SEO optimization to help your website rank well in Google and other search engines.

    4. WooCommerce:

    WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin and a customizable, open-source eCommerce platform built on WordPress. WooCommerce is one of the fastest-growing eCommerce communities. If eCommerce is a distribution channel you plan to enter, WooCommerce can be an excellent tool for your WordPress roadmap and development. It is scalable and fully customizable. WooCommerce has its mobile app so that you can manage your business from your smart device anytime and anywhere.

    5. Yoast SEO:

    Yoast SEO is the number one WordPress plugin for SEO. Search Engine Optimization is key to your site being found. In your WordPress updates for 2021, you need to ensure you have the latest technology working for you in SEO. The rules from the search engines are continually changing. Yoast does the work for you to identify those changes and focus on what you need to do to improve and maintain a high ranking.

    6. Google Analytics Dashboard by MonsterInsights:

    Google Analytics by Monster Insights is the most popular WordPress plugin for using Google Analytics. It is a premier tool for tracking statistics on your website, and this WordPress plugin puts the full range of Google Analytics functions right on your WordPress dashboard. Without leaving your site, you can check traffic and clicks, get data on visitor behaviors, and more.

    7. Akismet:

    Akismet is the most popular WordPress plugin for protection against spam comments. Created by the team behind WordPress itself, Akismet filters all comments and allows users to block or approve commenters. Akismet is free for personal sites, with premium plans available for business and professional bloggers.

    8. Twenty Twenty-One:

    Twenty Twenty-One is the fastest-growing WordPress theme for bloggers and editorial websites. It presents a blank canvas for your ideas, and it makes the block editor your best brush. With new block patterns, which allow you to create a beautiful layout in a matter of seconds, this theme’s soft colors and eye-catching yet timeless design will connect with your audience and beautify your ideas.

    9. WordPress AutoUpdates:

    Created by the WordPress team, this WordPress plugin does what it says. It provides automatic updates to WordPress plugins and WordPress themes. It is in constant development to ensure WordPress updates for themes and plugins are correct, tested, and implemented in real-time.

    Agency Partner works with these WordPress updates every day. We can help your business or organization use these WordPress updates in 2021 to improve your website’s visibility, functionality, and safety.

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