My site has just been down for more than 24 hours due to a wordpress update, that in its wisdom the plugin developer assumed that the version of MySQL would be an older version, and corrupted the WordPress database that the site uses.
I’ve recovered the site from last nights backup, and thankfully there has been no data loss, but its still a timely reminder as to the importance of regular backups of both files and the database of even a small WordPress site.
Needless to say, panic averted, and automatic plugin updates are now turned off!