Automatic updates in WordPress and Joomla sound safer than they are.

You probably recognise it: you log into the dashboard of your WordPress or Joomla website and see a red message. "Updates are available." With a click of a button, it's settled, or even easier: you have 'automatic updates' turned on. Wonderful, you think. Technology takes care of it, security is in place and you can get back to focusing on your core business.

In theory, that's a wonderful story. In practice, blind reliance on that autopilot is one of the biggest risks to the stability and security of your company website.

It sounds contradictory, because updates are there precisely to plug holes. But modern websites have become complex ecosystems. In this article, we dive into the world behind the update button. Why do things go wrong more often than you think? And why is a professional maintenance subscription not an unnecessary luxury but a smart insurance policy?

The house of cards called your website

Imagine your website as a modern house. The Core (WordPress or Joomla) is the foundation and walls. The Plugins or Extensions are the appliances and pipes: your dishwasher, the thermostat, the solar panels. The Theme or template is the finishing touch: the stucco and the paint.

The problem? All these components are built by different creators. The creator of your 'contact form plugin' is not in daily contact with the creator of your 'webshop module'. When the base (the Core) gets an automatic update, the 'dishwasher' may suddenly not understand how the 'pipes' work.

We call this the dependency problem. Because there are tens of thousands of different combinations of software, no developer can test whether their update goes together with all the other plugins you use. One automatic update can thus rock your whole house of cards.

The 3 biggest risks of "autopilot

1. The "White Screen of Death" and invisible errors

It's every entrepreneur's nightmare: you open your site and all you see is a white screen. Or worse: the site seems to be working, but you discover only after three days that customers can no longer request quotes because the form has crashed after an update.

Automatic updates don't take your office hours into account. They run in the middle of the day or on weekends. If something breaks, your site is down just when your customers need you.

2. The database gets tangled up

Sometimes an update doesn't just modify a file, it throws the entire directory structure of your database upside down. If that update falters halfway through or clashes with another extension, the data gets corrupted. At best, you see weird characters on your site; at worst, your entire configuration is erased. Without a recent, tested backup, you are then far from home.

3. The wolf in sheep's clothing (supply-chain attacks)

This is a relatively new but growing danger. Hackers nowadays target not only your site, but the developers of popular plugins. If they manage to push an "infected" update to the official channels, your website will get the malware via the automatic update function. So you open the front door wide to the wrong people, simply because you have 'automatic update' turned on.

Why professional maintenance is safer

You may now be asking yourself: "Should I just never update again?" Definitely not! Outdated software is an even bigger risk.

The solution lies in controlled management. With a professional maintenance subscription, we don't work with the 'lucky method', but with a set process that protects your business:

Test first, then live: We never perform major updates directly on your live website. We make a copy (a staging environment), perform the updates there and check whether everything is still working. Only when we are 100% sure, do we transfer it to the real site.

Human control: A computer cannot see that your menu has suddenly shifted or that your photos no longer load. We do. After a round of updates, we always do a visual and functional check.

Backup guarantee: Before we even touch anything, we make a full backup. In the unlikely event that something does go wrong, we revert to a working version within minutes.

Monitoring security news: We read daily reports on vulnerable plugins. If a leak is found in software you use, we often know about it before the hacker launches the attack.

Did you know. In 2023, research showed that over 20% of all new security vulnerabilities in WordPress could be traced back to a single software package used by thousands of plugins. An automatic update would not have prevented this, but smart management would have.

What can you do yourself?

Of course, you don't need to panic straight away, but it's good to take a critical look at your own site. Here are a few tips to reduce the risks today:

Clean up: Do you have plugins or themes you don't use? Remove them. Anything on your server is a potential target.

Limit the automatic: Turn off automatic updates for large, complex components such as your 'page builder' (Elementor, Divi) or your webshop module (WooCommerce). Rather have these updated manually and in a controlled manner.

Check your forms: Get into the habit of sending a test e-mail via your own contact form after an update.

Peace of mind, stability on your screen

Automatic updates are a useful tool, but they are not a complete strategy. For a hobby site, a 'white screen' might be annoying, but for a business, it means an immediate loss of sales and trust.

By opting for professional maintenance, you don't just outsource the technology, but more importantly you buy peace of mind. You know that an expert is watching, that your site always has a safety net in the form of backups and that updates are only implemented when they are proven safe.