Alert: More Than Half of All WordPress Sites Will Be in Danger This December

Anne Burns
Thu, 15 Nov 2018 23:41:45 +0000
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In December 2018, a scripting language responsible for 57% of WordPress sites will no longer receive updates, including security patches, themes, and plugins. The end-of-life cycle for PHP 5.6 and 7.0 could mean a major security threat for WordPress sites using the language, and could dramatically decrease their rankings on Google. Security updates and patches for certain versions of PHP will cease even earlier, meaning thousands of sites could be vulnerable to hacks and data breaches before the new year.

Security loopholes on WordPress are common, and data breaches do happen. In November 2018, the widely used General Data Regulation Protection (GDPR) Compliance plugin was hacked, putting even more sites at risk. The hack automatically created administrator accounts on WordPress sites, presumably to create "backdoor" codes to gain unrestricted access to data. Breaches like this happen often because WordPress operates using a decentralized CMS model.

Why Security Threats Happen on a Decentralized CMS

Since its launch in 2003, WordPress has released over 200 product updates, many of them to address security vulnerabilities. Since WordPress is a decentralized CMS, every update has to be deployed to each individual site. This means every instance of WordPress on the web — and there are more than 87 million of them — has to be updated one by one. It's why many WordPress customers use costly managed hosting to make sure their site is up to date with 24-hour monitoring.

If a site does not have third-party hosting, it's up to the managing developers of each site to deploy and configure around these pivotal updates to avoid breaking custom code and plugins. This can be problematic for smaller teams that have one-to-two developers at most, and who cannot monitor a site 24/7, 365 days a year.

Why It Doesn't Happen on RebelMouse, a Centralized CMS

RebelMouse is a centralized CMS, so all of our updates are deployed to every site in our network at once. Many times, our clients don't even know they're happening. Our coverage spans across time zones so your data is never vulnerable. And not only do we ensure every site we host is operating safely, but we also make sure each is optimized for peak performance.

But this doesn't mean that our platform is closed off to industry advances in infrastructure. We use the languages of the open web, and any developer can easily learn our platform to create high-quality work without relying on unstable and fragmented WordPress plugins and updates.
Safety is just one of the major reasons it's worthwhile to upgrade your technology from WordPress to RebelMouse. Here are five more enticing truths about why you should be using our enterprise-level platform. And even if a replatform is not on your current roadmap for 2019, we can still optimize your site for data protection, site speed, monetization, and more through our creative agency branch. Request a proposal today and let's start working together.