Yes absolutely. Simply log on to WordPress and click on the update button. It will show you all the updates available across WordPress Core and plugins.

The difference when engaging icreate to do this for you are:

> We’ll do this on a staging environment and check for issues before applying to the live site.
> We use both automated image snapshot checks and manual sampling of pages and functionality when testing.

iCreate subscribes to multiple WordPress security blogs. If we become aware of a critical security vulnerability that affects your site, we’ll patch that particular vulnerability between our scheduled visits.

Why is this necessary? Unfortunately, many annoying hackers out there (who should get haircuts and real jobs) are constantly looking for exploits and vulnerabilities in widely used web software – including WordPress. Once an exploit is discovered, they create ‘bots’ that automatically crawl the internet searching for sites they can exploit; often, the attack is also automatic. A compromised website may redirect traffic elsewhere, show fraudulent pages, attempt to install malware on visitors’ computers, send spam or perform many other undesired actions. It’s an unfortunate reality and one we have to deal with.

The quarterly cost varies depending on the size and complexity of the website. This usually is 1-1.5 hours per quarter for smaller sites at our standard rate.

Large, complex or eCommerce sites may require 2-4 hours for more thorough and detailed testing.