What to Do About Outdated Plugins

WordPress recently turned 15 years old! Can you believe it?

It now runs 28.9% of the entire internet!

Assuming your website runs on WordPress, was it by any chance one of the early ones? Even if your site was built within the last couple of years, you should be concerned about your plugins. Why is that?

Outdated plugins could have security holes in the software, which threatens the safety of your site. In addition, as new versions of WordPress come out, there could be a compatibility issue that could break your site … when you least expect it.

Though a little bit on the techy side, Eric Karkovack explains in his post Dealing With Outdated WordPress Plugins some of things to do.

The first step is to take a look at what outdated plugins you have installed and figure out what it is they do. This can be especially difficult if it’s a site you didn’t build. If you’re really fortunate, you might find that a plugin was installed but never actually used.

First, plugins that are not being used should always be removed. Second, look to see if the plugin has been updated in the past year; if not, find a suitable plugin to replace the outdated one.

Routinely look through the sites you maintain, see what plugins are installed and find out when they were last updated. Outdated plugins are one of the main ways that hackers gain access to your site, so it’s an important step to take.