How to Update WordPress Safely

Why would I update my WordPress site? I like it the way it is now! youre thinking.Well, your site might be safe for now but there are lots of monsters under the bed just waiting to attack it in the future. Thats why updating your WordPress site safely should be  one of the 10 WordPress commandments for everyone.Specifically:Why should I update my site?There are a couple of items that make this list, which will probably help you understand why updating really matters:Security. The WordPress platform faces lots of bugs, vulnerabilities, and hacks daily. Each one can be more or less dangerous. It depends  whether youre having good or bad luck. However, with each WordPress update, a number of bugs are always fixed and a number of security holes are patched, effectively making it harder for anyone to break into your site.New features and functionalities are added to each newly released version. Whether its completely new stuff, or just making the old stuff work better, those updates bring a lot of improvements. They will not only ease your work as a website owner, but will also improve your visitors experience.Speed.  Each new release comes with optimizations geared at making your website faster. Who wants a slow site anyway?Compatibility with modern tools and technology. Technology evolves so fast that its hard to keep up but WordPress somehow does. And some modern plugins require you to be on the newest version of the WordPress core in order to use them.If youre still not convinced that the update is essential, this resource will give you even more reasons why you shouldnt wait any longer.How to update my WordPress site safely?Okay, updating your site is easy, it takes 5 or 10 minutes tops.Here are the steps you should follow:1. Back up your siteBy backing up your site, you will make sure that your content is stored somewhere safe, so it wont be affected by the update. And in case anything goes wrong, you can always restore the old version of your site fr om the backup.There are lots of WordPress backup plugins  out here that will handle things for you on autopilot. So right now, proceed to install your plugin of choice, and then back up your files, database, themes, plugins, and uploads.Lets take BlogVault as an example to illustrate how backing up is done.Note. If BlogVault seems a bit too expensive ($7.4 / month), there are some alternatives available. Particularly, the new options in the Jetpack plugin allow you to take advantage of daily backups, one-click restores, spam filtering, and 30-day backup archive for the price of $3.50 / month. Quality-wise, Jetpack has everything you could need.After installing the main BlogVault plugin, go to the plugins section in the wp-admin, sign up to the service, and youll have the BlogVault dashboard on the screen right away.Add your site by clicking this button:After adding the site, click on Backup Now:Once the backup is done, click on History from the same menu to see all your backups.Yo u can download the backup to your computer or upload it to an off-site storage (I like to use Dropbox for that).2. Turn caching offIf you have any caching plugins enabled, turn them off during the update.Caching modifies the way your website works on the back-end, which will have an impact  on its performance, and who knows what else.3. Update your themes and pluginsJust like WordPress itself gets frequent updates, plugins do too (even more frequently). So first, update your themes and plugins.Lets start with the plugins.Go to your wp-admin and click on the button recommending you to update WordPress:There, youll see a list of all your plugins that need an update too. Select them all and click on Update Plugins:Return to that same WordPress update page, and do the same for themes. (By the way, make sure your plugins have been updated successfully. You should see an appropriate message when you come back.)Heres the panel for updating themes:Note. Theres also a second  way of upda ting your plugins and themes.Go to your wp-admin dashboard and click on Plugins (the sidebar menu). There, youll see a list of all your plugins. Those that are out of date will come with a message notifying you of the update available:Click on update now for each plugin thats outdated.Do the same for themes. Go to Appearance Themes (the sidebar menu again), and the themes list will appear. Check if your current theme is updated. If not, youll see something like this:Click on Update Available and then on update now:4. Update the WordPress coreIts funny how updating WordPress itself is actually the easiest and quickest step in the whole process.So, to update the WordPress core safely, you just need to click one single button. Which is:At this point, your site is  using the latest WordPress version!5. Turn the caching back onSince you disabled the caching mechanism before the upgrade, its time to reactivate it.6. Check if everything is okayNow your site is updated, but its a good id ea to browse around and make sure that things are in order.Go through your pages and posts to see if they are displayed properly. You dont really need to check every small detail, just take a general look.7. Back up your site againIf everything went well, you can back up your site again, just to have the most up-to-date version saved somewhere safe.Its very important to keep any major changes to your sites structure under control and always have the most recent image of the site backed up. If youre using Jetpack for backups, for example, you get a 30-day archive of all your backups, so reverting back to a previous one will not be a problem if anything should go wrong.So this is how you can update your WordPress site safely. At first, it might seem a bit difficult to go through all those steps, but the second time around youll be able to do it in less than 5 minutes. Be honest, when was the last time you updated your WordPress site, your plugins and themes?Free guide5 Essential Tips to Speed Up Your WordPress SiteReduce your loading time by even 50-80% just by following simple tips. * This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links and then purchase the product, well receive a small fee. No worries though, youll still pay the standard amount so theres no cost on your part.

Hunting and Gathering vs Sedentary Living Essay Example

Hunting and Gathering vs Sedentary Living Essay Example Hunting and Gathering vs Sedentary Living Essay Hunting and Gathering vs Sedentary Living Essay Gathering and Hunting Vs. Sedentary Living There are many events in the past that changed the course of history. The Neolithic Agricultural Revolution marked the transition between gathering and hunting to sedentary lifestyles. There were benefits to this change that have lasted until societies today. As well as benefits, there were also costs that effected people’s lives. The role of men and women shifted and things were slowly started changing to a world that is much like society today. Moving from gathering and hunting to sedentary living had its advantages. One of the advantages was the increase in their writing system. Writing was needed to keep track of the new flow of records coming in. As civilizations began to grow and thrive more people needed to be accounted for and these records needed to be recorded. It got to the point where the prehistoric pictures and murals weren’t enough. The civilians used symbols to account for the needs of the town. The creation of writing is beneficial also because it makes it possible for societies today to be aware and knowledgeable of the way that life was before them. It was also possible for laws to be set for the town’s people to see, and abide by them. One example of this is Hammurabi’s Code. Hammurabi’s Code was posted in the town and people were able to access it. The code set up rules for an ordered society. An ordered society was beneficial because since people were now becoming settled, there were new interactions that were unusual people didn’t know how to act around these situations. â€Å"Law codes give us an idea of a people’s sense of justice and notions of code† (Reilly 58). It also shows us how past societies, especially early civilizations lived their daily lives and kept order. There were other benefits of transitioning to a sedentary lifestyle such as the creation of centralized governments. Creating these governments along with the codes enforced order in the society and ensured the safety of the citizens. Another benefit was the creation of irrigation systems and farming. Farming is an imperative need to societies. People get their produce from farming. The creation of the irrigation system helped transfer the water from the surrounding rivers to the town so that they can farm crops. Also, the creation of stone tools helped make it easier to tend these crops. These tools also helped weave clothing and other needs for the new civilizations. The development of farming also was useful for domestication. By the villagers having an ordered way of growing and collecting food, the animals got drawn to the crops so they are easier to capture and tame. Farming also led to people settling down. People no longer had to go elsewhere to look for crops and herbds because they grew them in the community. Along with benefits, there were costs to moving to a sedentary lifestyle. For example, it changed people’s lifestyles. As gatherers, people were able to move freely and do as they please. There was nobody to tell them what to do such as leaders and tyrants. Once civilizations started to form everything had to be in order so there were changes. People were being told what to do and they suddenly didn’t have the opportunity to be nomads. This made it hard to adjust to third new society. As shown in the movie N! ai, the Story of a ! Kung Woman, this led to sickness in the village. People were dying left and right. Settling down also led to the introduction of slavery. People were set into social classes and people of the lower class were forced to do the labor that the upper-class didn’t want to do. Slavery was not here when there were Hunter- Gatherers because one more hand meant one more mouth to feed. They did things for themselves. There were also issues of social class. Citizens were classified by their occupation and what they could bring to the community. The commoners or lower class people with the less respected jobs ere always treated differently no matter what it was. With this shift in society also came the change of the status of men and women. Before settlement women held power and respect. People respected them because they were responsible for the farming which was the main way of acquiring food aside from hunting. Men and females were fairly equal in part. After settlement, the role of a female slowly began to digress and men became more powerful. In Mesopotamia as early as 2300 BCE inscriptions for ‘slave girl’ appear earlier than those translating as ‘slave male† (Reilly 31). There was also a high demand for female slaves as opposed to male slaves. In Marjorie Shostak’s Nisa: The Life and Words of a ! Kung Woman, she revealed how women weren’t able to speak their mind above a man. Men had final sa y in decisions and women were just there to back it up. Also young females were forced into marriage by their parents, but as mentioned before, the male parental figure would make the final decisions. In conclusion, the shift from a nomadic lifestyle to settled lifestyles has shown great change in the way that things were ran. The primary and secondary accounts listed in this essay helped readers see the emphasis that this change has on society today. There were sacrifices that people had to make in order to accommodate these changes. Even though one of these sacrifices had to be things such as equality of the sexes, this change still has marked something greater; a gateway for the development of future societies.