Web Security

WordPress Is Everywhere in Las Vegas — And That's Exactly the Problem

Try it yourself. Visit the websites of the local businesses around you: the corner restaurant, the law firm, the boutique, the marketing agency that keeps sending you ads.

Install a free extension like Wappalyzer and check what they're built on. You'll find the same thing over and over: WordPress, WordPress, WordPress.

It's no coincidence. WordPress powers roughly 42% of every website on the planet, and in a small-and-medium-business market like Las Vegas — packed with independent restaurants, professional services and local shops — its presence is especially visible. It's the default platform.

And here's where I'm going to say something half the industry won't like: WordPress is overused, and most of the people running it don't have the slightest strategy for monitoring and updates. It's a collective time bomb, and almost nobody knows it. Let me explain why, with real data.

The Misunderstanding That Started It All

The reason WordPress is everywhere is also the reason for its biggest weakness: it's extremely easy to get started. Anyone can have a site up and running in an afternoon. And that's where the problem is born, because people confuse "easy to launch" with "easy to maintain." They're not the same thing. Not even close.

WordPress isn't a set-it-and-forget-it product. It's more like a professional kitchen: it can produce excellent dishes, but if you don't clean it, check the ingredients and maintain the equipment, sooner or later you make someone sick. And that someone is your business, your reputation and your customers.

What's truly absurd is that this neglect doesn't discriminate by size. I get it in a small business that doesn't know tech. What can't be justified is seeing marketing and web development agencies with their own WordPress site, abandoned and out of date. It's the chef who opens an expensive restaurant and serves microwaved leftovers. If they won't take their own medicine, what can we expect from everyone else?

Why Neglect Is So Dangerous: The 2025-2026 Numbers

These figures aren't mine and they aren't local — they come from the global WordPress security landscape, reported by specialized firms like Patchstack, Wordfence and Sucuri. And they're damning:

▸In 2025, 11,334 new vulnerabilities were discovered in the WordPress ecosystem. That's 42% more than the previous year, and the highest number ever recorded.
▸91% of those vulnerabilities come from plugins, not the WordPress core. And the average production site runs more than 30 plugins — each one a door written by a different developer.
▸78% of hacked WordPress sites in 2025 had at least one plugin running an outdated version. Translation: the vast majority of those hacks were completely avoidable.
▸From the moment a vulnerability goes public, the median time to the first attack attempt is just 5 hours. Bots scan millions of sites a day looking for recognizable patterns: they're not attacking you, they're attacking anyone who fits.
▸Around 13,000 sites are hacked every day.

And in case you think turning on automatic updates is enough: 46% of vulnerabilities had no patch available the day they went public. This is key, because it proves that WordPress security isn't about pushing a button. It's active, continuous work: monitoring, a firewall, plugin auditing, backups and the ability to react fast.

The Uncomfortable Question

Of all the Las Vegas businesses running their site on WordPress, how many are actually doing that maintenance? Based on what you see reviewing local sites, and what the global statistics say, the honest answer is: very few. Most hired someone who delivered the site, got paid and vanished. Nobody watches the plugins. Nobody checks the updates. Nobody monitors. The site "looks fine" and "works," so everyone assumes it's fine — until the day it wakes up with its content replaced by a hacker's message.

To Be Fair: WordPress Isn't the Villain

Let's be clear, because the nuance matters and I don't want to be misread. The WordPress core is reasonably secure. The platform can be the right call: with a few well-chosen plugins, good hosting, active monitoring and — the essential part — someone responsible for its ongoing maintenance. Under those conditions, it's as secure as anything else.

The problem isn't WordPress. The problem is neglect. And in a market where the platform is used by default, without awareness of the responsibility it carries, neglect is the norm, not the exception.

My position is simple: WordPress is being adopted blindly, out of habit and convenience, in a huge number of cases where there's neither the staff nor the plan to sustain it. And a site with no update strategy isn't an asset — it's a liability waiting to blow up.

What You Can Do Today

If you have a WordPress site, ask yourself these four questions right now:

Do you know which version of WordPress you're running, and whether it's the latest?
How many plugins do you have active, and when was each one last updated?
Is someone actively monitoring your site, or does it just "work"?
Do you have automatic backups and a clear plan if you wake up hacked tomorrow?

If you can't confidently answer all four, your site is probably part of the problem I described — and you didn't even know it.

Not sure if your site is WordPress?

Use our free tool: paste your site's URL (or a friend's) and find out in seconds. If it turns out to be WordPress, you already know which questions to ask.

Try the WordPress Checker →

Have a WordPress site and aren't sure whether it's protected? I can run a security diagnostic and tell you exactly where you stand and what you need to sleep easy. Write to me and book your free diagnostic.

And if you found this useful, share it. Too many businesses are sitting on this time bomb without knowing it — you might save someone you know a serious headache.