There are two ways to handle WordPress updates, and both are bad.
The first is to never update, out of fear of breaking something. The site keeps running old versions until a bot finds a known vulnerability and walks right in.
The second is hitting “update all” without looking. Fast, easy, and every so often it leaves your site broken with no idea which of the twelve plugins did it.
Here’s the middle-ground method we actually use. It’s not complicated, but it does require discipline.
Before you touch anything
A full backup
Files and database. Not the one from three days ago: one from right now. This step is non-negotiable, and it’s the one thing that turns a disaster into a ten-minute inconvenience.
And something people forget: check that the backup actually ran. Confirm the file exists and is the size it should be.
Look at what you’re about to update
Before clicking anything, open the updates screen and read it. Not all updates are equal:
- Patch (3.2.1 to 3.2.2): minor fixes. Low risk
- Minor (3.2 to 3.3): new features. Medium risk
- Major (3.x to 4.0): deep changes. High risk, tread carefully
Many plugins publish a changelog. It’s worth reading when the jump is a big one, especially if it mentions breaking changes.
Pick the right moment
Never update on a Friday afternoon, right before you leave, or in the middle of a campaign. If something breaks, you want hours ahead of you and a clear head.
And if you run a store, make sure there are no orders in progress.
Order matters
Updating in a specific order cuts down on compatibility problems a lot:
- WordPress core first. It’s the foundation everything else runs on
- Then plugins, starting with the most critical ones (page builder, WooCommerce, security plugin)
- The theme last
And the golden rule: one at a time, never all at once.
Yes, it’s slower. But if you update twelve plugins in one go and the site breaks, you’ve got twelve suspects and zero leads. Update them one by one and something breaks, and you know exactly which one did it.
Check afterward: the five spots
This is where most people slip up. They update, see the homepage load, and call it done. The homepage is almost never what breaks.
After any major update, check:
- The homepage, with the full design loaded (not just that it loads: that it actually looks right)
- An inner page built with the page builder
- A form: submit it for real and confirm the email arrives
- The store, if you have one: a product page, add to cart, and reach checkout
- Logged out: open the site in an incognito window. A lot of errors only show up this way, because as an admin you’re not hitting the same caching rules
That last point explains half the “it looked fine on my end” calls that end up coming from a client.
If something breaks
Stay calm and work through it in order:
- Deactivate the plugin you just updated. If the site comes back, you’ve found the culprit
- Roll back to the previous version. There are free plugins that let you install a specific older version of another plugin. It’s the quick fix while the developer works on a proper one
- Restore the backup if the problem runs deeper. This is exactly what it’s there for
- Report it to the plugin developer. If you’ve found a genuine bug, flagging it helps get it fixed
Staging environments: when they’re worth it
A staging site is a copy of your site where you can update things and break them without anyone seeing. Many hosts offer one with a single click.
Let’s be honest: not every site needs one. For a simple corporate site that gets updated once a month, a solid backup is probably enough.
It’s clearly worth it if you run a store with daily orders, if the site is your main lead channel, or if it’s got a lot of custom-built functionality. In those cases, an hour of downtime costs a lot more than the time it takes to maintain a staging setup.
A note on automatic updates
By default, WordPress auto-updates core security releases. That’s a good thing, and you shouldn’t turn it off: it closes critical vulnerabilities fast.
What’s worth checking is whether you’ve got automatic updates turned on for plugins. It’s convenient, but it means a plugin can update itself at 3am on a Sunday and break your site with nobody around to notice.
Our take: automatic for core, manual and checked by hand for the plugins that matter. For the minor, low-risk ones, automatic is fine.
The short version
Back up first, update one at a time, check afterward, and never on a Friday. There’s no real trick to it — it just has to actually get done, and that’s usually where it falls apart.
If you’d rather not have to stay on top of this yourself, that’s exactly what we handle for clients: we update using this method and check the site afterward. If anything breaks, we roll it back ourselves, and you find out from our report, not from a client calling you.
Want us to take care of it for you? Get in touch with our team at nooria.tech and we’ll get back to you within 24 hours.
Want to apply this in your business? See how we do it in WordPress maintenance and security (WP Shield) and web design and development, or tell us about your case and we will reply within 24-48 working hours.