Best practice for updating plugins – advice please

  • Hi there,

    I have recently had a membership site built for me by a developer, which uses a number of different plugins including Paid Memberships Pro. I am getting regular notifications in my WP admin of plugin updates, especially for the PMPro plugin.

    I know that I’m supposed to keep my plugins updated, but I haven’t been doing this as I’m scared of breaking something (there were a number of plugin conflicts during the building process) which caused numerous headaches. As I’m not a techie, I am hoping that someone can advise me of the best way to safely update plugins.

    Do I just need to back up my site and then reinstall it if there is a problem (I don’t yet know how to do this), or do I use a staging site to test the plugins first (I’ve only just learnt about staging sites so don’t yet know how I would go about using one)?

    Feeling rather lost so any advice would be much appreciated!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • The easiest method:
    – duplicate the project to the same server or a similarly configured server
    – use to test if the updates are successful

    How to do that:
    – Backup your plugins folder (duplicate and rename the copy to something like plugins_bk
    – Backup your database
    – Run updates
    – Check if everything works
    – Do the same on the live site if everything works

    Thread Starter juliettem

    (@juliettem)

    Thanks very much for your help @archie22is. Because of my ‘non-techie’ status, can I just clarify a couple of things:

    1) When you say ‘duplicate the project to the same server or a similarly configured server’, is that the same thing as creating a staging site?

    2) If I update and run the plugins on the duplicate project and they break something, do I then replace the plugins folder and database (on the duplicate site) with the back-up folder and back-up database that I made earlier?

    3) OR do I use the duplicate project/site to test the updated plugins and if it breaks, I then have to create another duplicated site and start again? ie, can I use the duplicated site numerous times for testing.

    Sorry, these questions probably sound really dumb, but all this stuff is very confusing to me.

    1) When you say ‘duplicate the project to the same server or a similarly configured server’, is that the same thing as creating a staging site? – Yes, that way you have a similar project to the live that you can run your tests on.

    2) If I update and run the plugins on the duplicate project and they break something, do I then replace the plugins folder and database (on the duplicate site) with the back-up folder and back-up database that I made earlier? – Yes (but I recommend running one update at a time just to make sure nothing is broken)

    3) OR do I use the duplicate project/site to test the updated plugins and if it breaks, I then have to create another duplicated site and start again? ie, can I use the duplicated site numerous times for testing. No – if it breaks, you can simply restore the working plugin. You will get a hang of it ??

    Thread Starter juliettem

    (@juliettem)

    OK, thanks very much for your help. Looks like I’ll need to get myself a staging site! Much appreciated.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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