Everyone makes mistakes, but when you’re just starting with WordPress, some traps are easy to fall into. To help you avoid these common blunders, we’ve put together this list so you can avoid the same mistakes many beginners make. Ready to begin? In this article, we will help you avoid common mistakes and pitfalls when you’re just starting usage with WordPress.
7 Common WordPress Usage Mistakes
1) Use Any Hosting Company
Many knowledgeable business owners use websites and blogs to connect with existing customers and reach potential customers. While most business owners see the value of creating awesome content, selecting a good web host often takes a back seat. In my experience, most small businesses make the wrong choice initially. That’s because he doesn’t adequately assess your needs. Using a simple and cheap hosting plan without good response time, SSL, or compatibility with the latest PHP versions.
This does not mean you need the most expensive web host to understand your site’s purpose and the traffic you can attract. After doing some research in review and people talking about the company you’re using or want to use, all the companies have their social networks. Today, you can see what clients say as well.
2) Do Not Update Your PHP Bases
PHP 7+ offers one of the biggest performance leaps in this particular piece of software. If your web server still runs an older version (5.6 or lower) and those versions are outdated, you may encounter some errors. You could be preventing your site from running as well as it could. So keep your PHP updated as much as your host supports it.
To update your PHP, you need to access your website cPanel and click on ‘PHP config’ or something like this (it changes according to the host), letting you select the section you want. You can always contact your host support team and ask for it.
3) Do Not Proceed With Backups
When should you backup? Suppose you don’t have a plugin or a hosting platform running automatic backups. In that case, the answer is: Always backup before you make any substantial changes on your site, like WordPress, themes, or plugin updates, for example.
If you update part of your site and it breaks everything, you’ll need the ability to fix the error or a backup of your site to roll back. Or else it will likely face some downtime. You can find many amazing free WordPress plugins for this job. Some good ones can be found here.
4) Do Not Test In a Separated Site Of Local-Host
As WordPress users progress in their career, their site grows as well. Editing everything live is not the best option if you have a stable and professional website. To work on a WordPress site, we recommend our users install WordPress locally on their Windows or Mac computers. Once you are done and satisfied with your website, you can upload it from localhost to the live server.
There is one problem with this method. What if something that worked on your localhost does not work on the live server? This would cause errors. So it can be a problem for established sites because it can affect search engine rankings, sales, first impressions on users, etc. Instead of uploading your changes to the live site, you can upload them to a staging site on the same server.
A staging site is a separate development area (usually a subdomain) on your site with restricted access. You can test your changes here or use them for your entire development. Once you thoroughly test your site, you can upload it to your live site.
5) Maintain Unused Plugins
Every plugin you upload and activate in your WordPress site takes some queries and can slow down your site. In addition, a possible back-door that can affect your site security, so always check your plugins section. Delete anything that it’s not important for your site usage, and make sure that the remaining ones are updated so you can avoid these common WordPress mistakes.
6) Too Big Images Usage WordPress Mistakes
Images are crucial to your website. They provide visual cues for users and strengthen your brand identity. Photos are an integral part of an online experience. Plus, when your images are optimized for SEO (with descriptions and keywords), they can drive lots of new traffic (and boost sales!) Particularly if you have an online store or photography portfolio. Images are the defining reason users visit your site in the first place, right? Poor images are not an option.
In addition, if you’re uploading images to your site that are too large, they could slow page load time and contribute to higher bounce rates and lost conversions. If you’ve ever reduced the size of an image, you’re likely aware of the risk. Damaging the quality of the image. So always optimize your images to keep a good loading time.
7) Ignoring Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) often involves making small changes to parts of a website. When these changes are combined with other optimizations, they can have a noticeable impact on your site’s user experience and the performance of your organic search results.
Many of the topics in this guide are an integral part of your web page, so you may already be familiar with them, but you may not be able to get the most out of them. WordPress offers several free SEO plugins that can help with this.
Final Thoughts About WordPress Usage Mistakes
Those are some common WordPress mistakes. I noticed over these 10 years as a WordPress themes developer and offering support for many users. If you take some minutes to work on it, you can avoid all these mistakes quickly. We hope this article on common mistakes and pitfalls to avoid when you are just starting with WordPress has been of help to you.
