Support Forum

mann said
I was wondering what is the right way to update wordpress plugins.

Is it necessary to put the website in maintenance mode ? Because till now I do just click on "Update automatically" option that appears beneath the plugin without putting the website on maintenance mode. 

It's a good question. As far as I am aware WP automatically puts the site into 'maintenance' mode when it updates itself to a new WP version but I am not sure if it does the same when updating plugins. Mr Papa can probably tell us that.

Speaking personally I always do. But then I update my local test sites first to ensure new plugins are actually working as expected and this is, I appreciate, a luxury most users will not have.

WP's strength is the plugin system but it is also it's weakness. Every WP user is reliant on a unique group of people writing disparate plugins - sometimes not that well! - that hopefully all work together as expected. And we know from experience that this is not always the case!

My advice is -and always will be - to keep a copy of the old plugin before updating so you can put things back they way they were if things fail or go bad!

And though I know it's recommended that one should take the back up of the website before updating but do people practically do that ?

I never really understood those people who don't have a backup regime in place. So much can go wrong and I don't just mean with WP, plugin updates etc. My own bad experience has simply been with my host messing things up after a server problem. Taking regular backups of the site and the database is really a must. And storing the most recent backups locally is also an obvious advantage as if the server crashes you don't want your backups to go down with it!

Plugins like wp-dbmanager can take care of backing up your database on a regular basis. But will still store them on the server. your hosting cPanel can also make full site backups and inform you via email when they are done so you can download them for safety.

If you invest a lot of time and energy into your website and believe that it's loss would be a significant problem to you then backups are essential. But I suspect most users do not bother.