You do the hard work - it's pretty frustrating to discover your webpage isn't even showing!

You do the hard work – it’s pretty frustrating to discover your webpage isn’t even showing!

At the Australian Small Business Centre we offer a WordPress and Website Design course and a few of our WordPress students asked the question:  “Why isn’t my WordPress Webpage showing?” Let us explain a little about how WordPress works and why your webpage might not be showing up on the internet.

Warning to keep your WordPress Up to date.

Above: A warning to keep your WordPress up to date.

How WordPress Works

WordPress is software that exists on the internet for all users to use. The coding area of WordPress is ‘open source community’ which means that more than one person is updating the code or fixing problems that might be appearing on your website.

If you don’t update your WordPress webpage frequently, one day it just might not open at all because the code is so out of date! (Don’t stress too much if this happens — you won’t lose any of your work so long as you’ve kept your administration for WordPress up to date.) If your code is being superseded, WordPress will send you a warning located on the top of your screen on the Dashboard page, or you can find it located on the Dashboard in the WordPress blog.

Some Reasons to Update Your WordPress Webpage

Some key reasons to update your WordPress webpage include:

  • Security reasons — Some people have fun hacking into software (this means putting unlawful code into your pages) which could put your webpage at risk and may adversely affect your ratings.
  • Upgrades — People are constantly upgrading widgets, layouts, Plugins and so forth in WordPress. This means your webpage will be up to date and you will have access to new tools. 
  • Fix bugs — Sometimes the software developers might make a mistake in their code; by updating any bugs are removed and updated.

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So don’t let your WordPress website go down by not remaining up to speed with the WordPress code! You’ve probably worked hard to get your site to where it’s at, so keep up to date. That way your blog and your business will continue to be seen by the online world.