Is it Okay to do the WordPress and Genesis Updates?

There were recent updates to WordPress and Genesis. I received a question the other day asking if it’s okay to do the updates. I did the update myself on my own blog and everything is working fine. I did however have one problem with the Jetpack plugin and their Site Stats not working. My blog was still functional and it didn’t affect my blog. Just my traffic stats would not show up in the dashboard. It took me a week to figure it out and it happen to be a bad plugin on my site (that I never use). I deactivated all the plugins I wasn’t using and the Stats started working again.

If you purchased a blog design from us – these updates should not affect your design in any way. If it does please contact us. Some bloggers will not have any problems with the updates, while others may experience major/minor issues. If you experience a major issue like your site is gone and all you see is a white screen (don’t’ get scared, this rarely happens) then contact either StudioPress (if that’s the update you did for Genesis), WordPress.org Forum, or your hosting provider and see if they can help you get your site back up. If you experience a plugin not working then contact that plugin’s support page.

My own Rules I go by:

First and very important is to backup your content before doing an update. I recommend Backup Buddy but your hosting provider may also have a backup system already available to you in your control panel (check and see).

Second – wait at least a week or two before doing the updates. This gives other services and plugins (that you are running on your site) time to make sure they are working correctly with the new updates.

Third – If you have multiple updates you need to do than do one at a time. After each update refresh your page to make sure your blog site is working. That way if something happens to your blog you will know which update it was that caused the problem.