Using Yoast on your WordPress site? Update it NOW!

 

We’ve written a few posts about the importance of keeping your WordPress website up to date, but this one might be the most pressing.

WordPress SEO by Yoast is one of the most popular WordPress plugins out there, because it’s a very powerful SEO tool, helping over a million active users improve their search engine rankings.

The bad news is that a major security issue has been discovered which could put those million active users’ websites at risk of being hacked.  You can find out more about that on their website, here.

The great news is that they acted quickly and released a forced automatic update to fix the problem.  Well done Yoast – we just wish that every plugin author acted so responsibly!

What do I do?

If you’re running WordPress SEO by Yoast you just need to check that the update has completed and that you’re running the latest version.  You also need to do this if you’ve opted out of automatic updates on your website.

If you don’t know if you have it installed, check to be on the safe side. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Log into your WordPress dashboard (usually www.mywebsite.com/wp-admin) with your WordPress username and Password.
2. If you see this menu item down the left hand side, you’re running WordPress SEO by Yoast.
3. Go to ‘Plugins’ from the menu on the left hand side.
4. Scroll down to the ‘WordPress SEO by Yoast’ section and check the version number.
   As long as it says Version 1.7.4 (or higher if you’re reading this after March 2015) you’re up to date and don’t need to do anything else.
5. If you’re running an older version, click the ‘update now’ link and follow the instructions.