One of the reasons schools choose Realsmart is that they never have to think about updates. WordPress and the plugins your website uses release fixes all the time, many of them for security, and we apply them for you across every school. You should never notice.

That is a promise we take seriously, so this term we changed how we test.

Rehearsed on real schools before it reaches yours

An update can pass every automated test and still trip over something on one school’s website: a setting, an old table, a layout built years ago. The only reliable way to find those is to try the update on real websites first.

So now, before any WordPress or plugin update goes live, we:

  1. find every school website that uses the plugins being updated;
  2. take private copies of a spread of those websites, chosen so that every updated plugin is covered;
  3. run the update on those copies exactly as it will run on the live websites;
  4. open the pages that use each plugin, and the dashboard, and check for any error.

If anything fails, the update does not go out. Our release tools refuse it until the problem is fixed and the rehearsal passes.

A diagram of the update rehearsal: find the schools, copy real websites, run the update, check every page, then go live, stopping at any error.
How every update is rehearsed before it goes live. Illustration.

Updates at sensible times

Live updates now go out only in a fixed window during the school day, when our whole team is on hand to keep an eye on it. Updates also no longer clear every school’s saved pages at once, so your website stays quick straight after a release.

A timeline of the day showing updates going live only in the middle of the school day.
Live updates only go out during the school day. Illustration.

Faster pages

We keep a ready-made copy of your pages so visitors do not wait for each one to be built. We now store those copies compressed, which means we can keep far more of them ready, and more of your visitors get a page that loads instantly.

Safer for the people building your website

Our designers build new school websites on a separate test server. Updates to that server used to interrupt their work for a few minutes. They now switch over in an instant, with the previous version kept ready in case it is ever needed.

And a security review of our own plugins

We also carried out a full review of the plugins we write ourselves, fixed the issues it found, and removed code that was no longer used. Fewer moving parts means fewer things that can go wrong.

None of this needs anything from you. If you ever do spot something that is not right after an update, email support@realsmart.co.uk and we will be on it.