Today I spent several hours updating all the drupal installs on my system. Luckily they are all hosted from one drupal install, however updating each database separately is quite annoying and I can see why these things are often left unattended.

However, for a webserver these are often a pathway into rooting a system and sending out spam or hosting illicit materials. Therefore it is essential that big projects (and small ones) make auto updating a priority. Just like backups, if its no ones jobs to check all the web software running on ones server it will never get done. These things need to be automated and notify admins of problems when the automated problems occur.

On that note, web software should ensure that it can contact the admin via email atleast once if not more often. The admin could ignore them, but hopefully he would notice emails missing and know to check in if there is a problem. So update your installs, and try to move away from projects which don't let you host many domains or installs from one codebase as that adds just another layer of work and means the essential upgrades will probably not be made.