The difference between experienced and amateur Forum Owners, can be decided between who thinks how important constant software updates can be in running a successful forum. When a new forum update is out, it may or may not be the wisest of decisions to update immediately. You may want to update right when a new update is available if you want to run the newest and latest version of a particular software. Then again, the newly released update could introduce more bugs than it fixes, and you may want to wait to upgrade until the staff members of the update release have heard and fixed feedback they have received from those who have already downloaded, uploaded, and applied the new update. An update to a forum software can introduce a number of fixes to previously reported bugs and glitches, such as a new theme update, new plugin update, or a brand new version of a particular software altogether.
Updating a plugin, for example could fix a broken template that was reported by a user of the plugin to the plugin author. You may also want to get in the habit of testing out a newly released update to a forum software, plugin, or theme fix on your local host and not on an actual live site, so you don’t accidentally introduce a “bugged update.” Before you update anything relating to forum or website software, you are going to want to make backups of all of your websites and forums core files and templates, along with any images that you might want to keep in case something unexpected happens during update installation.
Forum owners should also turn their board offline by logging into their administrative control panel for their forum software, along with creating a “.htaccess” restriction file in the root of their forum installation to prevent any members from causing a disruption in the forum software during upgrade installation. Before upgrading any part of your forum software, you may want to post an announcement or send a private message or email to your registered board members, informing them of any down time that may occur during the update process. The forum members and even guests who simply visit the website to read the content won’t be caught unaware if they see an error message or slow loading of webpages during the updating process. Any staff members you have employed on your forum or website, would need to be notified as well so they can in turn, relay information to their designated area of the forum if they are assigned to a particular section of the website.
Before you update your forum or make any changes to any part of your forum software, you should always make backups before applying updates of any kind. Even simple one lined edits in a template file for example, should be treated just as important as backing up and editing a core file in your host’s control panel for your server that is running your database and files.
Discussion Topic: Why are Forum UPDATES Important?
