One important aspect of running an online community is safety. Keeping your software up to date is one of the best way to ensure your community stays safe.
Today I updated CommunityAdministrator.com with the latest WordPress software. I also needed to update the theme and 5 plugins. There are times when an update is simply a bug fix or a gives you additional features. You can even introduce security holes when you update, but generally the latest software is the most secure.
Not all software tells you when an update is available. WordPress does a great job of letting you know there is an update. Vbulletin also let’s you know but it’s not as obvious. To get notification of new updated you should sign up for the vendor’s mailing list or add their RSS feed to your RSS reader. Most software vendors will announce new versions one of these two ways. There’s also the Twitter and Facebook options, but not all of the software vendors announce updates this way.
It’s important to stay up to date. You have a responsibility to your community to try and keep them safe while they are on your site.
[...] goals, values, and members, but you still need to keep up. Sometimes that includes simply apply security updates. Other times it might require a complete site [...]