The 10 Most Frequently Repeated WordPress Mistakes And How To Avoid Them
No questions can be raised on the quality performance of WordPress. It is indeed the best CMS out there, as it holds more than 60% CMS market share.
Still, business managers who end up experimenting with WordPress on their own are not able to reap maximum benefits out of it. In fact, they end up wasting a lot of their precious time. The reason being that only astute web developers are capable of handling WordPress well enough.
As a result, the chances of frequently repeating mistakes that end up becoming a hindrance in the functionality of WordPress. Some of these mistakes look very minor, but their impact on the functionality and the result of your site is considerable.
Nevertheless, aren’t mistakes supposed to teach you something?
Of course, they are, and it is about time that you learn from your most frequently repeated WordPress mistakes so that you can avoid repeating them by outsourcing this task to a reliable agency!
The 10 most frequently repeated WordPress mistakes are:
- Choosing the wrong theme
One measure mistake that even well-established businesses end up making is that they opt for the wrong theme. Mostly, businesses choose a theme based on its apparent features and aesthetics. In doing so, they often ignore the most important aspect of a theme: its code and performance. Yes, you heard it right!
The way a theme has been coded can make or break the deal for you. If a theme has been poorly coded, it is likely to mess up your site’s functionality in the near future. On the contrary, if it has been coded well enough, your site is going to function extremely well.
This is why most people opt to develop a custom eCommerce theme for WordPress for large complex websites.That is why at WP creative, we believe in lean and mean model. We always recommend businesses to design a website specially tailored to their business and objectives rather than choosing a random theme which doesn’t represent your brand and deliver the results you need. In the end, what’s the point of having a website which doesn’t help the business to grow. The website has to be designed to support the business. It has to work as an ATM machine for the business bringing sales 24/7.
- Not having a backup
How many of you have thought that your site is too new and too empty to have a backup? If yes, let me tell you, you have made a TERRIBLE MISTAKE. Not having a backup of your WordPress site can literally cost you a lot more than you can even imagine.
Most of the incidents of security lapses are unrecoverable. Therefore, having a backup is highly recommended. If you are managing your WordPress site under the impression that WordPress will automatically backup your data, then you are highly mistaken. It is nothing more than a myth.
There are numerous WordPress plugins available that you can install to keep your data safe in case of any security mishap. Some such highly recommended plugins are BackupBuddy (premium), VaultPress (premium) and BackWPUp (free).
- Testing new plugins on a live site
I am sure many of you will be able to relate to this. Suppose you decide to install a new plugin. How will you go about it? Most of you will end up installing the desired plugin on your live site, right?
That is exactly where you will go wrong. What if the site crashes while downloading the new plugin? It’s a nightmare. You might need to find an expert and resolve the issues and that can cost you a lot of money. As most of the professional agencies charge almost double their usual rate for emergency support. Even worse, you will end up losing your live traffic, prospects and it can also hamper your search engine ranking.
The only way to avoid making this mistake is to use an experimental copy of your live site, we call it a staging server. This way you will get to experiment with the latest copy of your WordPress site without any fear. If any mishap happens, you can simply and very easily restore from the last working backup.
- Not making URL SEO friendly
To put it simply, permalinks are only the way a website’s URL is structured. It is highly recommended that you should choose such a structure for your site’s URL that is user-friendly. The URL should also be keyword rich. This will help your visitors in memorizing the URL and will eventually improve the search engine ranking of your site.
If your website’s URL isn’t well-structured, there are a couple of things that you can do. First and foremost, you should alter permalink through the WordPress admin area. In order to do this, WordPress recommends that you should change the file permission of the .htaccess file to 644. If you do not have access, WordPress will provide you with the code for your permalink structure so that you can update it.
- Using low-cost web-hosting
Site owners mostly try to lower their costs. In doing so, they often forget that cheap web-hosting has its own demerits. The servers of cheap hosting companies are flooded with clients. If the traffic inflow of one site spikes, all the websites collectively go down. The tolerance limit of resource overuse is extremely low. And they are vulnerable to hacking as well.
Hence, you should always opt for recommended web hosting companies. And, when the right time arises, shift to a powerful solution like VPS or managed WordPress hosting.
- Redesigning your website frequently
When it comes to WordPress, themes are akin to clothes. Just like you can look different by changing your clothes, your WordPress site’s appearance can also change tremendously by changing its theme. A clean and well-structured theme can augment the value of your website by increasing the conversion rate.
It is a common practice among new WordPress users to keep jumping from one theme to another. To say the least, it is really tempting to do so. Just like a person who gets a new mobile cannot resist the temptation to keep experimenting with its wallpaper, a novice WordPress user finds it hard to not change themes frequently.
However, it needs to be noted down that redesigning your WordPress site is not a bad thing. In fact, at times it becomes a necessity. You can read out When Should You Redesign Your Website to find out more about it.
In a nutshell, it is a good practice to keep revisiting your website from time to time to ensure that it is well-aligned with the goals of your business. If it is not, feel free to redesign it. Otherwise, abstain from doing so!
- Keeping your username as ‘admin’
When you initially create your WordPress site, the username is set to ‘admin’ by default. You must make sure that you do not continue operating under this username. If you do not change the username, you make your site vulnerable to security attacks. Therefore, it is highly recommended that you should ensure your site’s security by changing the username.
- Having a weak password
This might appear to be common sense, but you will be surprised to hear that website developer and owners still make this mistake. Knowingly or unknowingly, they end up choosing a password that is fragile. A strong password has the following characteristics: uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special characters.
One of the biggest reasons people end up choosing a weak password is that straightforward passwords are easy to memorize. However, you can actually use password management tools like LastPass to store all your passwords in one place.
- Not using optimised images
Optimised images are key to website’s high speed and good performance. The header image plays a pivotal role in leaving a good impression of your site on the visitors. Other images are also quite important. The right balance between the quality and quantity of images is absolutely necessary.
In order to choose high-quality images, you can take help from Carly’s presentation on how to select a good stock image. As far as quantity is concerned, you should pay special attention to aspects such as dimension, size, responsive property, format, etc. In order to get guidance on quantity, you can refer to an article on WordPress Image Optimisation Techniques.
- Undermining the mobile audience
Slowly and gradually, mobile phones are becoming the most widely used electronic device. People belonging to every social class, age group and nationality are using mobile phones at an ever-increasing rate. Hence, in today’s day and age, the gravest mistake that a business can make while designing its site is to ignore mobile phone users.
To a huge extent, Google’s ranking depends on how well a site is capable of responding to different devices. The responsiveness of a site on a mobile phone is of prime importance. In fact, Google has started penalizing sites that aren’t mobile responsive. Nowadays, almost all WordPress themes are mobile-responsive.
If your site is not mobile responsive, do not worry. Contact our friendly WordPress experts, we will assess your website in different devices and come up with the right recommendation for you.
Conclusion
WordPress is indeed the best CMS out there. However, most of the people are not able to reap maximum benefit out of it because of the above mentioned frequently repeated WordPress mistakes.
If you wish to experience WordPress at its best, you should try your level best to avoid these frequently repeated mistakes!
One of the best ways to do so is to handover the task of designing and developing your WordPress site to people who are a pro at this. Our team of experts has a strong grip over WordPress website development. They know their job inside out. Perfection is one of the defining characteristics of our work. Hence, you can expect error-free website development from our end.
Book a free consultation with our team of experts today and avail the opportunity to discuss the development of your customised business website at your earliest!
