CMS Made Simple Forums

Hi there,
I was wondering if there was documentation anywhere that explains why you should and the benefits to upgrading your cms to the latest stable version?  I would like to relay this to some clients of mine, but not sure where to start other than saying it's for security reasons, which I feel I need to give them more concrete reasons for them to chew on.  I would love to refer them somewhere to explain to them why it's essential to stay up to date.  Is there something like this already somewhere?  I couldn't seem to find anything through a search, but I might be looking in the wrong place.  Or if someone has a few clear cut reasons that they might be able to share, that would be excellent.

Thank you in advance!

Well, I can think of of a few reasons:

1.  Security Fixes
If your website is hacked you may experience:
a) angry customers
b) angry hosts
c) blacklisting
d) compromized private data
all of which will require contacting a developer to fix on an emergency basis, which is expensive... not to mention the damage control that must be done with the customers.

2.  Bug fixes
Every package has bugs.  When your system is upgraded, usually a number of bugs are fixed.  Sometimes you may not have noticed that the bugs existed... but other times those bugs may be major inconveniences.

3.  Features
No website is static, or should it be.  Therefore the demands placed on a website change over time.  Performing all upgrades will allow your develolper to more easily implement new features to your website (he/she can take advantage of the newer features in the software instead of having to write them from scratch and try to shoehorn them im).

Excellent - that's what I was looking for.  Thanks Calguy!

Some quick googling came up with this nice article:

http://www.itomic.com.au/article/The-Irrepressible-Reasons-for-Upgrading-Software

That's fantastic - I was originally looking for something like this within CMSMS, but this covers it for sure.  I like having supporting information along with my own suggestions.  Thanks so much for your help and very quick reply.