DaveBirchall.com on Business Technology

Users of Jooma! and Wordpress will know that that there are hundreds of plugins or extentions that you can use to pimp out your beloved free content management system, but I’m not here to talk about the fun stuff today. I’m here to talk bout the serious stuff – hacking.

You see the popularity of these content management systems is a double edged sword. Whilst the popularity of these platforms means that they are well supported by a community of users, they are also prime targets for attack.

As with any popular software, back bedroom hackers and even organised crime networks want to leverage their time effectively. If they can find a weak point to exploit they will. That’s the reason that you are constantly asked to download patches, security updates, hotfixes and so on for your operating system.

Joomla and Wordpress are no different. They are constantly releasing new versions that both improve the product but also address security issues. It’s a never ending battle.

In  the same way, its important to keep your operating system updated, its just as important that you keep your wordpress, joomla and related third party extentions up to date too.

Luckily, there are some tools that will help to make this all fairly easy. These come in the form of plugins and extensions that will guide you through the update process and even prompt you to download back ups along the way (do this…. I’ll say it again… do this!)

So know you know why to do it, here’s how to do it.

You can get the extensions from

• Wordpress Automatic Update
• Update Manager for Joomla!

If you get stuck, just ask..

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