WordPress plugin updates - why they break your site, and how to stop minding them…

Every WordPress site comes with a small job that never ends. A plugin wants updating. Then another one. You click the button, or you leave it for later, and either way there is the same small worry: will this one break something?

If plugin updates have turned into a chore, or one has already broken your site, this page is for you. It explains why updates break things, what WordPress’s automatic updates really do, and the other option: a home with no plugins to update at all.

Why a plugin update breaks things

A plugin is a small piece of software, written by somebody else, that adds one thing to your site: a contact form, a gallery, a cookie banner, a cache to make pages faster, a page builder. Each one is updated by its own author, on its own timetable. Most sites run a dozen or more.

Every plugin is written on the assumption that the others stay as they are. When one changes, another can stop working, or the two can start to clash. That is a plugin conflict, and it is why an update that fixed one thing can break another. Usually the damage is small: a form that stops sending, a page that suddenly looks wrong. Sometimes it is the whole site.

WordPress knows this happens often enough to build a safety net for it. Since version 5.2, when a plugin or theme causes a serious error, visitors see a screen saying the site is experiencing technical difficulties, and the site owner gets an email with a link into a recovery mode to put it right. It is a good safety net. It is also a measure of how ordinary the problem is.

What automatic updates really do

Since version 5.5, WordPress can update plugins for you. It is not switched on by default: you turn it on plugin by plugin, from the Plugins screen. Once it is on, WordPress runs its automatic updates twice a day and emails you to say what happened, including when an update failed.

That takes the clicking away. It does not take the risk away. An automatic update can break a page just as a manual one can, only now it happens while you are asleep. WordPress’s own guidance is to make sure you can roll the site back to an earlier version before you switch automatic updates on. So the chore changes shape: fewer clicks, more backups, and the same small worry in the morning.

Why you cannot just stop

Once the site works, it is tempting to leave the updates alone. WordPress’s own documentation is plain about why not: to keep your site secure, you should always update your plugins and themes to the latest version. A plugin left a version behind is one of the ordinary ways into a WordPress site, and what happens when one is used against you is a page of its own.

So there are two risks, and you choose between them every time the update alert appears in your dashboard. Update, and something might break. Wait, and the door stays open.

Too many plugins?

People worry about the number, and the number matters less than it seems. What matters is what each plugin does, whether anyone keeps it up to date, and what else it touches.

But every plugin is another author, another update and another thing that can clash with the rest. A site that needs one plugin for its forms, another for its search settings, another for speed and another for security has four jobs running on it, and each one is a small subscription or a small risk, often both. All those website subscriptions lays out what that pile usually costs.

What a move changes

When Bernard moves your site, he reads every page as a visitor sees it and rebuilds each one as a plain file in a new home. The plugins stay behind. So does WordPress itself, and its database.

That is the end of the update chore, not a better way of doing it. There is nothing on the new site to update: no plugins to fall behind, none to clash with each other, and no morning where an update broke the site overnight. What your plugins did for your pages, the layout and the look of each one, comes across as part of the page. The jobs a search-settings plugin did are built in: page titles, descriptions and the sitemap, changed by asking in plain words.

Every post, every page and every old link comes across, kept and redirected so the searches that find you now still do. The plain version of that is in How to move your website without losing your Google rankings.

After the move, you change things by saying what you want in your own words, and Bernard does it. There is no plugin to find, install and keep updated for each new thing you want the site to do.