Originally Posted by PamWinterReturns

I ran about forty sites on WordPress. Every site was manually updated by me. Too many new versions of WP and/or plugins and themes have issues, leaving you vulnerable. I’d wait ten days to be sure it was okay, then update everything. It took time as I’d do an extra backup first in case I had to downgrade. Plugins don’t always play nice with older themes or versions.

It took time but was worth it. If you upgrade and something breaks, you try to figure out why, then what caused it, then find the previous version, etc. Consider it weekly maintenance after you do a backup. If too much breaks, restore saves you many headaches.

I don’t install plugins or themes via Wordpress. FTP is better IMHO because you’ll have a copy of the original on your machine. If a vulnerability is discovered down the line, waiting for the fix can be hell. It takes a few minutes and then just move that program original to flash drive. Just in case ......