Upgrade Your WordPress Plugins

If you’re like me, you probably don’t check your plugin page very often.  Aside from activating something new you’ve uploaded, there’s really no reason.  The problem, however, is that your forget to update your plugins.  After taking a look at my page the other day, I found several notifications like this:

Yikes. That sounds urgent. Just like upgrading your WordPress installation, upgrading plugins is very important. New versions often fix security issues, known bugs, usability, etc. Be sure to backup your installation and deactivate the selected plugin before performing major upgrades - the last thing you want is a PHP error that makes your blog inaccessible.

If you’ll be spending a few minutes upgrading multiple plugins, you might want to install Maintenance Mode - a cool little plugin that shows a message to visitors that your blog is being worked on and will be up shortly.