The Danger of Updates

Let’s discuss software updates and your website. Just like any other modern software driven tool, like your computer, your smart phone, your smart TV, a printer, etc, they all are constantly getting patches, performance updates, and bug fixes.

You need to make sure your stuff it patched and updates so it continues to run at peak performance. If you don’t you run the risk of things not working the way they should, or leave yourself open to security risks and hacking. Your website, no matter the platform, is no different. You must keep it updated.  In this video we look at your options, and the best way to handle updates. 

Today, I wanna talk a little bit about updates on your websites. And when I’m talking updates, I’m not talking about content updates. I’m talking about software updates on your website.

Just like any other modern software-driven tool, like your computer, your smartphone, your smart TV, you printer, your X-Box, PlayStation, your video games, all are constantly get patches, performance updates and bug fixes.

Your website is no different.

You need to make sure you keep it patched and updated so it continues to run at peak performance, and if you don’t, you run the risk of things not working the way you want, things breaking because they’re no longer compatible, and you leave yourself open to security risks and hacking.

Your website, no matter the platform, is no different. You must keep it updated.

There are several routes you can take with it. You can do it yourself, you can do automatic updates, or you can let the professionals do it. So, I’m gonna break down what the differences in those three approaches are.

DIY Route

Now, most people elect to go the DIY route. We’ve worked on many, many websites. The problem with this approach is that most people forget it. They get too busy with their life. A lot of people, because they’re too busy running their companies, particularly if they don’t have an active blog on their website that they’re maintaining, they kind of forget about their website, because their website is up and running 24/7, and as long as it’s getting leads and sales, people are concentrating on running their business, and not taking care of their website, which leads to these software updates rarely, if ever, getting done. This is one of the biggest ways things get hacked, and malware spreads. I’ve seen it time and time again. So, that’s the problem with the DIY route. People tend to forget.

Automatic Updates

Another approach, and this is a fairly new one, in the last year or two, is automatic updates. And automatic updates are better than the DIY approach because they get pushed as soon as they’re ready. But, this can cause issues. When updates are automatically run, you run into the risk of one software update not being compatible with another one. And I’ve seen this happen in really big environments. I’m a former IBM-er. I spent a few years working for them in the IT department, and you have these huge enterprise-level systems, and all these other pieces that intersect with it, and if one of those software updates isn’t fully tested and ready to go, it can bring the whole other system down. And so, that’s the problem with it. On your website, for example, you may have a third-party contact form that might not be compatible with the latest version of Chrome or Firefox. And so, for people who are running those versions of browsers, they may be trying to contact you and say they wanna hire you or buy your product, and their entries aren’t getting through to you because of those incompatibilities. And unfortunately, with automatic updates, because it’s kind of fire-and-forget, people may not realize the problem until days, weeks, or months down the line. But, running automatic updates is better than forgetting to do them at all.

Let the Professionals Do It

The third and the best option is to let the professionals do it. I’m gonna let you in on a big business secret. This is how every large company does it. If you’ve ever worked for a large company, you know you don’t get to update anything on your computer. The IT department handles it. They push out updates to your computers only after stuff has been heavily tested, so everything continues to work. Your website is your always-open store. It needs to be running 24/7, 365 days a year. With a prebuilt website, you can let the professionals, which are us- we will handle software websites for you. And I don’t know of any other hosting company that does this. Now, we can do this, because we build all of our websites with the same premium suite of tools that we know like the back of our hand. We know what works, and we know what doesn’t. We test all these updates ahead of time, and roll them out in an orderly fashion, so your business is uninterrupted. Your website stays patched and optimized, and your data is always secure.

With a Prebuilt website, your updates are handled like you are a Fortune 500 company.