 Karen Blundell |
Those of you using WordPress may have noticed that there is a notification in your dashboards that WordPress 2.9.2 is available and you should upgrade. Normally I advise everyone to upgrade asap because it usually is a serious security risk if you don't. This time it's not so critaical, unless you have untrusted users who are logged into your blog. Apparently users can see posts that you send to trash, so if you habitually trash posts or pages with sensitive material in them, then you should upgrade. If not, you can hold off for a while, but please do install the plugin called Secure WordPress which hides the version of WordPress you're using in the source code of your website, among other security measures. Why hide the version of WordPress you're using? Because if you're running an older version of WordPress, it is more vulnerable to getting hacked. It happened to me last year. I had a blog that was starting to see some success in the Search engines and it was in the relationship niche, and because I didn't secure it, and didn't upgrade it, a hacker got in and destroyed it. Another thing I recommend that you make a habit of doing is to always export your posts, pages, comments, custom fields, categories, and tags under Tools-->Export, whenever you post new stuff to your WordPress blog. That way, you'll always have a current XML file of all your content to import into your blog should it ever get hacked. I also recommend that you backup your database once a week. I have mine set automatically so that once a week, the system emails me my database backup file. It's always better to be prepared so that you don't lose all your hard work. So if you feel better having the latest version of WordPress, by all means upgrade. This time, though, there isn't a big rush as long as you have other precautions in place. Happy blogging! |
