How often should I update my website?
There are two clocks running, not one. Content — hours, prices, services, new work — should change the moment your business changes, and get a full read-through every few months. The software your site runs on needs patching monthly or automatically, and that's the update people forget.
In plain English
Think of it like a car. Content updates are washing it and clearing out the back seat — nice, and people notice. Technical updates are the oil change: nobody sees it, nobody compliments you on it, and skipping it is the thing that actually leaves you stranded.
Three things to know
Content: fix it the day reality changes
New hours, a new price, a service you dropped, a job you just finished — if someone would get the wrong answer from your site today, change it today.
Software: monthly at the latest
Your platform, plugins, and themes ship security patches on a schedule, and once a patch is public the hole it fixes is public too.
Automatic updates still need a human
Turn them on, then have someone actually load the site afterward and confirm the forms, menus, and payment buttons still work.
Worth remembering
Sucuri's 2023 Hacked Website and Malware Threat Report found that 39.1% of all CMS applications were outdated at the point of infection.
That's close to four in ten hacked sites running software a fix already existed for. The repair was sitting there, free, and nobody installed it.
What to do about it
If you don't know what's running behind your site or when it was last patched, I'll check and tell you in plain English. Get a free website audit
Where this shows up in my work
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