Top Mistakes to Avoid When Using WordPress
WordPress is a powerful and flexible platform that powers millions of websites around the globe. However, like any other tool, improper usage can lead to mistakes that may impact your site’s performance, security, and overall user experience. Whether you’re new to WordPress or a seasoned user, here are some top mistakes to avoid when using this platform:
1. Choosing the Wrong Hosting Provider
Your hosting provider is the backbone of your website’s performance. Selecting a slow or unreliable host can lead to website downtime, poor load times, and a bad user experience. When choosing hosting, consider factors like speed, uptime, support, and whether the provider offers WordPress-specific features (such as managed hosting).
Solution: Invest in a reliable hosting provider with good reviews, strong customer support, and scalable resources for growing websites. Managed WordPress hosting, such as SiteGround or WP Engine, is often a good choice for optimal performance.
2. Not Updating WordPress, Themes, or Plugins
Outdated WordPress software, themes, and plugins can expose your site to security vulnerabilities and compatibility issues. Hackers often target websites running outdated versions of WordPress or popular plugins.
Solution: Regularly update your WordPress core, themes, and plugins. Enable automatic updates when possible, and always back up your site before performing updates.
3. Installing Too Many Plugins
While WordPress plugins enhance functionality, installing too many can slow down your website, create conflicts between plugins, and even expose your site to security risks.
Solution: Use only the essential plugins for your website’s functionality. Regularly audit your plugins and remove any that are no longer in use or aren’t optimised. Always check user reviews and test new plugins on a staging site before adding them to your live site.
4. Ignoring Mobile Optimisation
With over half of web traffic coming from mobile devices, not having a mobile-friendly site can result in poor user experience, higher bounce rates, and lower rankings in search engines. Some WordPress themes aren’t fully optimised for mobile, leading to issues with how your site displays on smaller screens.
Solution: Choose a responsive WordPress theme that automatically adjusts for different screen sizes. Test your website on multiple devices, and use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to ensure that your website is optimised for mobile users.
5. Neglecting SEO Best Practices
WordPress is SEO-friendly, but this doesn’t mean you can neglect SEO altogether. Many site owners fail to optimise their content, forget to set meta tags, or don’t use appropriate SEO plugins, which results in lower search engine rankings.
Solution: Use SEO plugins like Yoast SEO or Rank Math to manage on-page SEO, including meta titles, descriptions, sitemaps, and schema. Ensure that your content includes keywords naturally, images have alt text, and URLs are SEO-friendly.
6. Overlooking Security Measures
WordPress, by default, doesn’t include all the necessary security features, leaving your site vulnerable to hackers. Common mistakes include using weak passwords, not setting up a firewall, or failing to install security plugins.
Solution: Strengthen your security by using strong passwords, installing a security plugin like Wordfence or Sucuri, and enabling two-factor authentication. Regularly back up your site, and change your login URL to something unique.
7. Using Default Permalinks
WordPress automatically generates a default URL structure (like www.example.com/?p=123) for your posts and pages, which is neither user-friendly nor SEO-friendly.
Solution: Change your permalink structure to a more readable and SEO-friendly format (e.g., www.example.com/blog-post-title/). You can update this by going to Settings > Permalinks and choosing a structure like “Post Name.”
8. Failing to Backup Regularly
Without regular backups, you risk losing all your content, customisations, and data in case of server failures, hacks, or accidental deletions. Many WordPress users underestimate the importance of backups until it’s too late.
Solution: Set up automatic backups with plugins like UpdraftPlus or BackupBuddy. Ensure that your backups are stored in secure, external locations like cloud storage (Dropbox, Google Drive) and that you test your backups regularly.
9. Poor Content Organisation
Poorly organised content can lead to bad user experiences and a lack of engagement. Failing to categorise and tag your posts properly may also hurt your SEO efforts and make your site difficult to navigate.
Solution: Organise your content with a clear structure. Use categories for broad topics and tags for more specific topics. Avoid overusing tags, and ensure that your content is easy to browse through by using menus, breadcrumbs, and search functionalities.
10. Not Customising Themes or Over-Customising
Many WordPress users either use themes as-is without making any customisations or make excessive modifications to themes without using a child theme. Both extremes can lead to issues, with a lack of uniqueness or breaking the site when the theme updates.
Solution: Strike a balance. Make customisations that enhance your brand without overcomplicating the design or functionality. Always use a child theme for modifications to prevent losing your changes during theme updates.
Conclusion
Avoiding these common WordPress mistakes will help ensure that your website runs smoothly, securely, and efficiently. By taking proactive steps, like maintaining your site, optimising for SEO and mobile, and focusing on security, you can create a user-friendly and high-performing WordPress site.
