Whats the plugin update procedure?

Our WordPress hosting plans include updating the plugin software that provides WordPress added functionality.

The plugin update is separate from the WordPress core update. Plugins are much more complicated and require a much more methodical approach.

Only our managed plans include real people visually checking the website for changes because of to the new versions of the software.

AUTOMATIC PLANS

1. We alert you prior to start the process
2. We take a specific backup of your plugin files (internal)
3. We update each plugin updates on the live website
4. Our software checks the functionality.
5. We alert you we have completed

MANAGED PLANS

1. We alert you prior to start the process
2. We verify your licensed plugins (see below)
3. We take a specific backup of your plugin files (internal)
4. We update each plugin updates on the live website
5. We visually inspect a portion of the website (see below)
6. We check that plugins are not reporting integration issues
7. We manually flush the onboard and external caching systems
8. Once the updates are complete, we’ll prepare a report.

Discussion:

Before starting, we take a backup of the plugin folder, not the entire site. This is then used if we run into any problems. We will have already updated your entire site within 12-24 hour, which is part of all our WordPress hosting plans. We will access these daily full site backups if required.

When we inspect the results of an update, we look for things like broken images, missing CSS, inconsistent visual elements, and we make sure that the pages are loading correctly. We cannot inspect an entire website as the subsequent cost would be uneconomical to clients. We focus our testing on the front end and perform a series of automatic and visual checks on the site. We cannot check third party integrations as this would require having access to every third party application. We check that the plugins are not reporting any integration errors.

If we encounter any problems or errors when updating plugins we will try to identify which plugins are responsible. We will take any error codes or screenshots available and share that with you in a summary email (as required). We evaluate the logs and determine the plugin that caused the issue. We will roll back the version of the individual plugin(s) causing a problem. Your maintenance team can then perform the upgrades manually after dealing with the issues we report.

We focus on the available WordPress admin updates available from the WordPress repository. If you have any licensed plugins, we verify that your licenses or registrations are active. This allows us to update any premium plugins that support automatic updates through the WP Admin. Without active licenses, the plugin developers will not allow updates.

The process will happen on a monthly cycle, but not always on the same day each. We do our best to keep the work in the same week each month. We don’t lock down the same day, but can work with you on a particular week.

None of our hosting includes correcting issues because of the new versions of the software.