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It depends.


It depends on your technical expertise and familiarity with the WordPress ecosystem.

But, if you are wondering about this then probably you don’t have enough experience to answer this question. Hence you should take care while updating any WordPress plugin. You shouldn’t update as soon as the update is available in your WordPress dashboard.

Why?

That can break your site.

WordPress website is created using WordPress core files, a theme, and lots of plugins. All of these components work like a machine.

If even one part is updated and the rest aren’t to make them compatible then the machine can break.


Having said that, that doesn’t happen always.

But make it a habit to backup your website files and the database before upgrading any plugin.


WordPress plugin updates are critical sometimes as the developers patch some urgent security flaws or issues. So in those cases, you have to update your plugin as soon as possible.


How can you upgrade properly?

Download a Staging site plugin

That will help you create a staging site (copy) on your server. Then do all the upgrades on your staging site. If the plugin you are updating breaks something, simply delete that staging site and reinstall it again. And you would know that you should not upgrade the plugin as it might break your live site.


In most cases, you can go ahead with the upgrade but it’s always beneficial to do it in a proper way so that if the worse happens then you are prepared. Always take backup of your website, and database before updating anything on your website.

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