How to stop software updates from breaking your production website

What the numbers show

Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count

• The most recent one is from October 2026.
• This comes up 111.7× more often in r/Wordpress than across the site as a whole.

1. 1
   Disabling automatic updates completely and performing manual updates regularly (at least once a week)

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2. 2
   Enabling auto-updates and hoping updates do not break the website

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3. 3
   Running auto-updates exclusively on staging sites rather than production sites

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4. 4
   Use the HTML5 site instead (though it loses drive redirection)

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5. 5
   Drop the web site idea and use the RDP App instead

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6. 6
   Install a browser extension that allows continuing to view it

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7. 7
   Enabling XSLT via Group Policy Object (GPO)

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8. 8
   Installing the XSLT Polyfill browser extension

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9. 9
   Buying a completely new theme that is already compatible with the current PHP version

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10. 10
    Refactoring the current outdated plugin and theme code with LLM assistance

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11. 11
    Purchasing an independent license for updated plugins like WPBakery

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12. 12
    Rolling back hosting to an older PHP version

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13. 13
    Cloning the site to a staging or local environment to update plugins and themes incrementally

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14. 14
    Hiring a developer on freelance platforms to perform a compatibility audit

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15. 15
    Using error logs and AI tools to fix deprecated functions

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In their words

Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.