10 WordPress Mistakes to Avoid
WordPress is an amazingly powerful and flexible tool. But like any tool, its wide array of options means it’s easy to make mistakes using it.
In this article, you’ll find 10 common WordPress mistakes and how to avoid them.
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1. Using Poorly-Coded Themes
Whether your theme is custom-built, purchased from a theme vendor, or downloaded for free from the WordPress repository, there are a few critical details you need to evaluate to ensure it will not put you at a disadvantage, including:
- HTML Validation
- HTTP Requests
- Excessive DOM Size
2. Using Page Builders
Page Builders, they make it easier for people to add and edit designed content. But the problem is that they also create a lot of bloated code, add unnecessary HTTP calls, and often, introduce HTML errors that you can’t fix. I’ve never seen a single page builder that produces clean, efficient code.
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3. Installing Excessive Plugins
The first problem is that there’s a wide range of development quality in these plugins. As with themes, many plugins are poorly coded, which slows down the load speed and introduces HTML errors into your website.
Often, these plugins also load a bunch of scripts, CSS files, images, and fonts, which further degrades speed and creates a poor user experience.
Another problem is that because it’s so easy, many people make the mistake of adding too many plugins.
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This causes your websites to load more slowly no matter how well each one may be coded because it still requires processing power to execute the functionality they provide and to include any external files they load.
4. Not Optimizing Media
We’re all carrying an incredibly powerful camera in our pocket these days, which gives us the ability to easily add new photos to our WordPress website, but this also leads to a common and significant mistake.
If your WordPress site is already up and running and you’re just starting to address this issue, the good news is that you don’t need to re-upload everything in your media library because there are a variety of plugins available to automatically resize them.
I want to point out that it’s absolutely critical to back up your website before running tools like this because if they delete or overwrite something you didn’t intend them to, you’ll need a way to undo that.
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5. Omitting an XML Sitemap
I generally use Yoast for this because it also incorporates several other features that we need, but there are a number of plugins that can dynamically create your XML sitemap each time you add, modify, or delete pages, posts, and media.
6. Skipping Updates
Given what I do for a living, I get to see the backend of a tremendous number of websites and am always surprised at how out of date some people are willing to let their plugins and themes and even WordPress core get.
7. Overlooking Security
We’ve already talked about the security implications of not keeping your plugins, themes, and WordPress core up to date, but keeping your website secure goes far beyond that.
8. Don’t Use a Default Username
By default, the first username in a WordPress install will generally be “admin” which should be changed because it’s the username hackers will try first.
9. Lockdown your admin area
There are multiple ways to limit access to your admin area to a particular IP, which will prevent most hacking attempts.
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10. Enable TFA (Two Factor Authentication)
Two-factor authentication is a powerful tool to protect your website because it sends a code to your mobile device that you must enter before logging in. This means that without physical access to your device, someone else won’t be able to access your admin area.
