Software and WordPress Upgrades

We are often asked why sites are not COMPLETELY up to date, below is an explanation.

WordPress upgrades consist of several things:

1. Upgrading the base WordPress code
2. Upgrading the WordPress plugins
3. Testing and dealing with any dedicated code that relies on the WordPress apis
4. Ensuring you have backups both on server and off server (for catastrophic failures)

Upgrade Implications:

Upgrading the core WordPress code can be fairly significant..

1. The more complex your site the more the risk of issues
2. The more plugins in the site the more the risk of issues (see below for the plugins that are included in your support costs)
3. The closer you are to the upgrade date when you upgrade the more the risk of issues
4. If you have free plugins you have a 70% chance of them being ok (subject to the age of the plugin and the level of support it provides). Generally plugins take about 3-6 months to upgrade their code to reflect issues they may have in the new WordPress code

Costs:

Our upgrade and support costs consist of several elements:

1. Commercial plugin licences – about £50 per site per annum
2. Backup Offsite Storage fees
3. Upgrade time – about 1.5 hrs per site
4. Restore time – about 1 hr per site (if things go wrong)
5. Risk of issues – incompatible plugins or misc code upgrades (we allow 1 hr per event)
6. Viruses – we “insure” your site to get it up and running ASAP if you get virused – we allow 4 hrs per event.

Our policies:

1. Due to the above implications, we do not do WordPress upgrades instantly – we wait between 3 – 6 months – we need stability in the core and in the majority of plugins.
2. Security:
   1. If there are ANY plugin security issues, we do them instantly
   2. WordPress Security – these are done instantly by the WordPress interface automatically
3. Plugins – secure plugins especially the commercial ones are upgraded on an adhoc basis as and when we enter the site – the free esoteric ones we do in conjunction with the main core upgrades or unless we find a bug (See table below for the plugins that are included in your support fee)

If at any stage you are concerned about the lag between software upgrades and our implementation then please contact us and we will work up a dedicated quote.

Std Plugins that are automatically supported in your upgrade costs: