How Often Should You Update Your WordPress Website? A Practical Security Guide

“Update available” notifications in the WordPress dashboard are easy to dismiss — until the gap between “available” and “applied” becomes so wide that updating safely becomes its own project. Knowing how often to update WordPress website, and which updates to prioritise, is one of the most practical security habits a site owner can develop.

How Often Should You Update WordPress Website? The Short Answer

Security updates: within 48–72 hours of release. Routine plugin and theme updates: weekly. Major version updates: tested on staging first, then applied within a month of release. PHP version: reviewed annually and updated before support ends. That is the practical answer to how often you should update WordPress website — the detail below explains why each of those cadences matters.

What Actually Needs Updating on a WordPress Website

WordPress Core

WordPress releases regular updates on a rolling schedule — minor releases (like 6.4.1) several times a year, and major feature releases (like 6.5) one to three times a year. Security releases can come at any time and are the highest priority. The official WordPress release notes document every update. The critical point: the moment a security patch ships, the vulnerability it fixes becomes public knowledge — which means unpatched sites become targets almost immediately.

Themes and Plugins

Every theme and plugin on your WordPress website is independently maintained software with its own update schedule. A site with 15 plugins will typically have multiple updates available every week. How often you update WordPress website’s plugins determines how exposed you are to known vulnerabilities. Inactive plugins — installed but not in use — still represent attack surface and should be removed rather than left sitting with pending updates.

PHP Version

Your hosting environment runs a specific PHP version. Older PHP versions pass their end-of-life date and stop receiving security patches, often while still running WordPress sites perfectly functionally. Running an unsupported PHP version is a quiet but genuine security risk, and can also affect performance. Check PHP’s supported versions list to confirm your current version is still receiving active support.

SSL Certificates

Most hosting providers auto-renew SSL certificates, but this renewal does fail. An expired SSL certificate produces a hard browser warning. Monitoring SSL expiry is part of knowing how often to update and check your WordPress website’s full stack.

Recommended Update Cadence for Your WordPress Website

• Security updates — applied within 48–72 hours of release. These are the highest priority. Do not wait for your regular update window.
• Routine plugin and minor WordPress core updates — checked and applied weekly or at minimum monthly, as a batch after a quick backup.
• Major version updates — a major WordPress release (e.g. 6.4 to 6.5), a major theme version, or a significant plugin overhaul should be tested on a staging copy of the site before being applied to the live site. These are the updates most likely to break something.
• PHP version reviews — once a year, check your PHP version against the supported versions list and plan an upgrade before the current version reaches end-of-life.
• Design and content refresh — every two to three years for most small business sites, separate from technical updates. See our guide on signs it is time for a redesign for a practical checklist.

The Real Risk of Not Updating Your WordPress Website

The most expensive outcome is a compromised site — malware, injected spam links, defacement, or customer data exposure. The less dramatic but more common outcome is a site that gradually accumulates vulnerabilities, compatibility issues, and performance degradation until a crisis forces expensive emergency work. The WordPress security team documents this clearly: most successful attacks exploit known vulnerabilities in outdated software. Keeping your WordPress website updated is not complex; it is consistent.

How to Update Safely Without Breaking Your Site

The update process that minimises risk: take a full backup before applying updates; check the changelog of any major plugin update for breaking changes; apply updates on a staging copy first for significant changes; verify the site works correctly after updates before confirming. This process sounds laborious but takes under 30 minutes for a routine update batch once the workflow is established.

Quick Reference: How Often to Update WordPress Website

For most small Irish business sites, the practical answer to how often to update WordPress website is: check weekly, act on security patches immediately, batch routine updates monthly, and test major updates on staging before applying to live. This cadence, applied consistently, covers the vast majority of security risk without consuming significant time. Our WordPress maintenance plans handle all of this on a defined schedule, alongside the performance checks covered in our performance optimisation service.

Not sure how up to date your site currently is? Get a free site health check →