We all are humans and yes we make mistakes because none of us is perfect. In fact, the experience is the common name for mistakes. Everyone learns from the mistakes whether it is done by themselves or by others. Experience is a great teacher.
In running your WordPress Development Company, you may ignore quite a few important things that can lead to problems in the long run.
Here are the first and the worst 25 most attempted that mistakes that are generally made by the newbie’s while building their WordPress website.
1. Selection of the Wrong Platform
Free WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress are the two platforms people usually get confused about choosing their blogging platform.
WordPress.com is generally suitable for bloggers, artists, photographers etc. While on the other hand, WordPress.org or self – hosted WordPress is for those who want to have total control of their websites. Be careful to choose the best for you!
2. Forgot to change the default admin Username
While installing WordPress, it creates ‘admin’ as a default username. This username is easily decidable by the hackers. Hackers can also crack your logins and take control of your website.
WordPress allows you to change the username during installation from the default one. This mistake is mostly done by the beginners.
3. Relying on Unknown Developer
To save money, relying on an unknown developer or hire a WordPress developer who doesn’t have much knowledge is the big mistake for which you have to pay later.
There are plenty of WordPress themes and designs available on the web. You want them and you have to pay for security, support etc. But to save some bucks and getting all of them out on free you hire unknown developer which is the biggest WordPress mistake to avoid.
4. Buying more than what you Need
When you start building your website with self-hosted WordPress, what you require is Domain Name and Web hosting. However, along with the Domain registration, there are various options provided to confuse the business owners like Private registration, SSL certificate, Branded Emails, 5-year registration etc.
5. Forget to take WordPress backup
Not creating backups for your WordPress website company is the most common mistake done by the users. You only realize this mistake when you are about to lose all your data and urgently need a backup for rescue.
So, it is always advisable to have a regular backup of your WordPress website.
6. Using Defective Theme
The proper and attractive theme is the future of your website. So, choosing a WordPress theme is crucial while building a WordPress website company. Remember, there are three most important things to keep in mind while choosing a theme – A reasonable price, Ease of use for you, Reputed Company.
7. Using Default Favicon
Favicon is the identity card of your website. It is the icon of your website that is visible on the browsers, bookmarks etc. If you don’t change this default icon, WordPress icon will be shown as default Favicon.
You can change this default Favicon during installation. You can either make it by yourself or can create with the free Favicon available on the web.
8. Use of too many categories
It is very easy to create categories in WordPress. This is the main reason people create a new category for every new blog. Categories are used basically to structure your website. So, don’t use too many categories on your WordPress development website.
9. Using default permalink structure
Using the default permalink or static hyperlink looks awkward and also bad for SEO ranking of your website. A search-engine-friendly permalink will improve your site’s SEO ranking and also shows your professionalism to the visitors.
10. Changing Website URL and Lose Settings
Switching from one domain to another is the common practice that we all have gone through. But, what should be taking care of while changing the domain is your website URL. If you change your website URL without following proper mistake, you are committing a big mistake.
11. Not Installing a caching plug-in
Caching is what that speeds up your website and prevents downtime of your website if you got a lot of traffic. Not installing caching plug0in due to the lack of knowledge is the common mistake done by the newbie.
12. Ignore SEO settings
While installing WordPress, you will come across an option to prevent search engine bots from indexing your website. You check this during installation abut forget to uncheck after that. Due to this, your website never gets indexed.
13. Not having Contact Form
Another mistake made by the WordPress beginners is not adding a contact form to their blogs. What they do, they just simply add a contact page and add their emails there. This way is totally wrong to connect with your audience. You may get flooded with an insane amount of emails in your email as SPAM.
So, it is advisable to add a contact form to your website.
14. Ignoring WordPress Updates
Forget to update your WordPress website is a big mistake. You are more prone to hackers if you don’t update your website time to time. Upgrading from one version to another is not hard, it only requires one click.
15. Forget to Install Analytics
Google analytics allows having an insight of your website and letting you know the areas to improve upon. So, if you want to increase traffic to their website, you must use Google analytics.
16. Practice of Writing in Microsoft Word
What happens if you write an article in Microsoft Word and your computer suddenly shut down? You may lose all your work, right. Also, while pasting your content from MS word to WordPress, there are a lot of changes to be made. WordPress has the auto-save ability. So, we advise you to write your article directly to WordPress.
17. Staying with the default tagline ‘just another blog’
The default tagline of the WordPress is the ‘just another blog’. Sometimes most of the beginners forget to change the default tagline. It is not a good SEO practice.
So, it is advisable to have a catchy and unique tagline for your website related to your niche and content.
18. Not making your website mobile responsive
The world has come to the mobile now. Now, most of the users use mobile phones, laptops etc devices to browse the internet. So, according to the need of the hour, your website should be fully responsive and mobile friendly.
19. Forget to Delete the Sample Page
Not having knowledge about the sample page on your website will also affect your website performance. So check that out and delete it if you are not using it.
20. Failure to Moderate Comments
Due to the lack of knowledge or proper training, the users don’t know how to manage comments on their WordPress website. So, manage your comments time to time or you can also disable comments if you don’t want comments on your website.
21. Ignoring gravatar and Google authorship mark up
Do you know about gravatar? Well, gravatar is the picture that represents you over the web. It is your picture that appears when you comment on any blog post or in a forum. Use it to have an identity over the web. Google authorship mark-up also lends you the credibility. It will show your picture next to Meta description in search results.
22. Not Optimizing image
Not optimizing your blog images is the worst mistake made by all of us often. This affects your website speed. If you want your website to load faster, always optimize your blog images.
23. Error in establishing a database connection
Error in establishing a database connection can occur due to a mistake. If your cPanel password doesn’t match with your database password. Then it will show this error. So, always create a database specific user.
24. Showing White screen of Death
In WordPress, white screen of death occurs when you install any bad plug-in or themes that exhaust the memory limit of the website. One of the solution to fix this error is to increase the memory limit.
25. Not learning more
There is always a space to learn new things. Not knowing more about the platform you are using is the worst mistake made by the WordPress users. S, make a habit to read about the WordPress and know more.
Here they are- 25 Most Common mistakes By the WordPress beginners. Now you know them. So, when you build your WordPress website, avoid these mistakes and learn from these mistakes. Mistakes are the beginning of a new learning phase.
How WordPress Provides the Perfect Platform for Augmenting Brand Visibility.
Author Bio:
Nishant Desai – Digital Marketing Strategist at Pixlogix Infotech Pvt. Ltd. I love to write about the latest trending updates, WordPress, Web Design, SEO and other interesting information. I believe in Learning, Sharing and keep growing together.