Late last week, the blog section of our website went down. It happened when one of the plug-ins* performed an automatic update. As soon as the update completed, the blog area wouldn’t load.

Of course, this had to happen during our busiest time of the year. Finding a few hours (yes, hours) to repair the damage was difficult but, yesterday, I managed to get everything running again.

It is true that, sometimes, when a program updates – whether it be an Operating System (Windows, Mac, etc.) or a particular app (e.g., Quickbooks, Microsoft Office, etc.) problems happen. When it does, it’s a real pain. Trust me, it was no picnic getting my blog site back up and running even though I make backups daily.

Unfortunately, hearing stories of update failures and crashes is a reason that many computer users would turn off updates or just ignore them. When you hear stories of updates causing major problems, it makes sense to think that way. However, as Zig Ziglar used to say, “That’s stinkin’ thinkin’.”

In reality, updates are almost always security-related and ignoring or delaying them can be devastating. The current rash of Ransomware often targets servers and computers which have not been patched with the latest updates. If you let the fear of having an update crash your computer or program stop you from performing updates, you are setting yourself up for an even worse fate.

Bottom line: don’t delay or ignore updates.

* Plug-in: a module or software able to be added to a system to give extra features or functions