Bugs are evil blood sucking villains. Remember Y2K? Nothing happened, but it could have been the end of the world. Who knows what will happen in 2012, it could be the day your blog is hacked, destroyed, defaced, you name it.

A simple glitch in the matrix and you’re dead.

more funny pictures

WTF?

Whether you listen to the Mayans, believe in Skynet or are actively trying to unplug your brain from the Matrix, all predictions of the future are catastrophic. How does this relate to your blog? I predict you will be hacked, lose all your posts, or lose all your comments.

Even in the best case scenario you’ll be spending at least one weekend clearing out spam or trying to figure out why a plugin suddenly stopped working. This is not inevitable, it happens because you’re a lazy oaf.

Who are you calling an oaf!

WordPress is great software, but it has bugs. Plugins are great extensions to WordPress, but they have even more bugs! All software has bugs. Some are known bugs, some are not.

Hackers like bugs; in particular exploiting them… Also working against you is the fact that it’s quite easy to discover information about the software running on your website. If you’re running old versions of WordPress, some goons will hack you just because they can…

Once an exploit is found, goons like to troll around looking for every opportunity to exploit the one and only bug they know they can exploit.

Where can I get bug spray?

Even with bug repellent, sometimes a mosquito still bites. Does that justify rolling around nude in the woods? No. Unless you really are an oaf…

Even if you haven’t had any trouble with WordPress or your blogging software yet, always upgrade anyways! Sometimes a bug can be a small annoyance, other times it can be migraine material. Trust me, it sucks when your database becomes corrupted and you lose forum posts, blog posts, comments, etc…

Always upgrade your software and plugins when a new version is released to minimize the risk of disaster.

What do I do if the mosquito still bites?

Upgrading software is not enough. Upgrading minimizes the risk of catastrophe, it does not eliminate it.

Always have a contingency plan ready. Not because it sounds cool, but because it could save you time and money. With WordPress your contingency plan is simple; MAKE BACKUPS. Schedule it. Don’t forget. Do it often.

Should I bother with backups if my software doesn’t have bugs?

There is always a glitch in the application you are running. If it’s a good program that has been tested properly prior to release, then chances are you won’t run into that glitch right away. Maybe you will never run into it. Maybe nobody will. Maybe we’ll have world peace and maybe everyone will win the lottery.

Software is never bug free. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise!

Even with the web, it’s survival of the fittest

If you want to live happily ever after, upgrade quickly and backup often. If you don’t, you’ll end up extinct.

A chicken can only run around without its head for so long.