WordPress is one of the most popular website design platforms in the world. You will be surprised to know that 33% of the world’s websites are built on WordPress only. This blog of ours is also made in WordPress. But while creating a website in WordPress, it is very important to keep some things in mind.
Therefore, in today’s article, we are going to tell you about common WordPress mistakes, by correcting these mistakes you can make your website and your blogging career better.
Nowadays, almost everyone is using WordPress for their business website and e-commerce platform. However, some people do not take care of security and mistakes on their sites. Due to this, they have to face many problems later. Here we are talking about some such mistakes. Which you must keep in mind while creating the site.
Common WordPress Mistakes
Here we are going to tell you about some mistakes that many bloggers and website designers make. If you are also a blogger then you must keep these things in mind.
1. Choosing the wrong platform
If you are thinking of starting your blog then there is a lot of difficulty in choosing between wordpress.com and wordpress.org which is right. For your information, let me tell you that these two are completely different. But in both of these, you do not need coding.
According to me, you should choose wordpress.org, it is a free open-source platform that you can download from its website. For this, you need hosting and a domain, for this, you will have to buy both of them. In this, you get many features with the help of which you can design your website as per your wish.
2. Choosing the wrong web hosting
These days, this is a very common mistake of new bloggers. Many web hosting providers promise to be good but after purchasing you face a lot of problems.
Often new bloggers get trapped in the trap of cheap hosting and take useless hosting which has very high loading time, due to which your website keeps shutting down again and again, or it is not able to manage the setup of WordPress. Which is very harmful for a website.
3. Installing the wrong theme
Often new bloggers are not able to buy premium WordPress themes. Or do not select a theme related to your blog. Due to this, you may have to face problems.
Many new bloggers download free themes from unknown sites due to which your website may get hacked later. Therefore, you should install a good theme on your blog. Which will be mobile-friendly and will also be fast.
4. Do not delete sample content
Whenever you set up WordPress and install a theme, the demo content also comes with it on your website. Some new bloggers do not delete it due to which Google can impose penalties on your website. And also your website may face trouble in getting ranked on search engines.
For this, click on Post >> All posts and delete whatever demo content is there. In this way, to delete the sample page, you will have to go to Page >> All pages.
5. Using too much Scripts
Most new bloggers ignore this thing. Too many scripts are very harmful to your website. Whenever the script is loaded, the loading speed of the website slows down, which has a direct impact on your site’s visitors and SEO. This can hurt your website’s search ranking as well as your earnings.
Often many people use a lot of JavaScript to make their site look good, along with this a lot of CSS is also used. Which may be responsible for your site speed. For your information, let me tell you that your site should be as per Google webmaster guidelines. Only then will your website rank. Therefore, it is very important to keep all the things in mind while designing your website.
Along with this, it is better to make the design of your website as simple as possible. Visitors want quality content and not website design. Therefore, focus more on your posts than on designing the website.
6. Using the Default Permalink Structure
Whenever you install WordPress, its permalink structure is something like this: example.com/?p=50. The number in it is your page or post ID. Most new bloggers and website designers leave it as it is. They feel that this will not have much impact on the website. Or they do not have correct information about this.
If you keep Permalink default then it can have a very bad effect on your website SEO, hence make your URL SEO friendly as soon as possible, so that your posts and pages can appear in good position in search engine ranking.
If you want to change the URL of your WordPress blog, then you will have to go to ‘Admin Dashboard » Settings» Permalink’. Here you will see some options, out of these you have to select Post name. In this way, only the name of the post will appear in your URL.
Note: Permalink should not contain any number, all letters should be small. Like – example.com/post-title-here/
7. Not updating WordPress & Plugin on time
WordPress is an open-source platform that anyone can use to design a website. In this, while designing the website, you use many plugins with the help of which your blog starts looking even better. Every plugin has an owner and they keep making changes in it to make the plugin look better and keep adding something new to it, due to which the user should keep updating the plugin.
Many new bloggers do not update the plugins of their WordPress website, due to which viruses can enter your site. Along with this, if you update the plugin then you will get its new features and your website will not be shown.
Along with this, you should pay great attention to WordPress updates. WordPress keeps removing its bugs with time and keeps providing the latest updates. Along with this, new features are also added in this update.
8. Not securing the WP-Config.php file
The wp-config.php file contains the most important data of your site such as MYSQL Settings, Database Table, and some private keys which are very important to remain secure. For this, you need to make some changes in its settings.
First of all, login to your cPanel, after this, you will have to go to File Manager>> Root Folder. Here you will get to see many files, out of which you should set the permission of wp-config.php to 400 or 440 so that no one can read or write this file of yours. By doing this your website will become more secure and your data will be saved from being hacked.
9. Not using HTTPS
This is a very important Google Ranking Factor. You should always keep your site and SSL Certificate installed. It has been seen that whenever a site has SSL, it ranks quickly in the search engines. It also protects your site from online viruses.
If your site does not have https then move it to https immediately. In this way, you can protect your website from spam attacks. Along with this, it will also help you in ranking.
10. Making changes in the Parent Theme
Whenever most bloggers customize their websites, they start editing the parent theme of their WordPress, which is not right. This is because whenever you update your theme, all these codes will be automatically removed.
Therefore, if there are any changes to your website, then you should do it in the child theme. By doing this, whenever you update your theme, all the customizations will not be removed and your site will run properly.
11. Changing Website Theme
Often new bloggers are very worried about their theme design. Because of this, they keep changing the theme again and again. This has a very bad effect on your WordPress blog. Due to this, your articles are not able to rank. Changing the theme causes many problems in the site like website speed slowing down, and bounce rate increases. For this, you should keep optimizing your website from time to time. But do not change the theme again and again. With this, your website loading speed will also be good, but with time you can make some changes in the design and color.
12. Not using a CDN
Many new bloggers do not use CDN for their blogs because it is paid. Its full form is Content Delivery Network, whose job is to create a cache version of the site and serve content to the users from the server located at its location. In this way, the website loads very quickly, and along with this it also improves your website loading speed.
Many service providers provide CDN services. You can choose anyone according to your budget. Currently, I use CloudFlare on my site. This is a very popular CDN company.
13. Not taking regular backup
Many bloggers do not pay attention to this latter, due to which they get into big problems. If for some reason your website crashes, you can update the backup of the blog again. For this, take a backup of your blog on a fixed date of every month.
Often your competitors try to damage your website. Therefore we should pay maximum attention to security. About which we have told you above.
These are some simple common WordPress mistakes that every new bugger makes. Before starting a blog, you need to know about it. So that you can update your blog from time to time.
14. Not creating Sitemap
Sitemap is very important for your website, by reading it the search engine indexes your post and helps in ranking it in the search results. Whenever you add any content to your site, its URL is automatically added to the sitemap.
Many people do not take care of this in their WordPress site, due to which the posts and pages of their site face difficulty in getting indexed. You can see that I have added the sitemap page in the footer of my site. In this way, you can also add a sitemap to the footer and header of your WordPress site.
15. Keeping a weak password
To log in to the WordPress site, a username and password are required. Externally, site owners and bloggers make their birth date or name the password. Which is very easy to hack.
Your password should always be strong. For this, you should use special characters like @!$%^&*] in the password. To create a good and powerful password, you can use online password generator tools.
If you have trouble remembering your password, you can also use a free password manager. If you want, you can save the password on your Gmail ID also.
I hope that now you know well about the common mistakes of WordPress. If you are also a WordPress user or blogger then you should avoid these mistakes. If you have any questions related to this post then please comment. Please share this post on social media.
