WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems available on the web. And for good reason, WordPress is intuitive, easy to use, and great for hosting a wide variety of different websites.
To be good at WordPress you don’t need to write code, it’s very SEO friendly out of the box, and is easy to manage. Despite this, there are still a number of common WordPress mistakes that are made by beginners and experienced WordPress users alike. In this article will share some of the most common WordPress mistakes and how you can avoid them.
Neglecting Your Permalinks
Before you start adding content to your website it’s important to think about the structure of your permalinks and your site architecture. If you’re new to building websites or have limited experience, it’s probably worth getting the help of a webmaster or WordPress SEO expert who can guide you through the process.
Once you start playing around with your permalinks, purls of your posts will inherently change. This means that if you already have content on your website, the URL associated with those webpages will inherently change. Visitors who reach your website through Google search will end up on your side with an error message indicating that the post cannot be found. This is commonly known as a 404 error and is something that you want to avoid.
Stay Up-to-date
Keeping your WordPress theme and all your plugins up-to-date can be hard work. If you have a number of different plugins installed then chances are you’re going to do a site update quite regularly. While this process is not difficult, it does require you to routinely check in with your theme and plugins to ensure everything is up-to-date. Keeping your WordPress itself up-to-date is one of the most important tasks that you can complete as a site manager. Updates will usually bring a number of improvements, bug fixes, and security updates that will enhance your website.
Limit Your Plugins
It can be tempting to download a whole host of different plugins for different tasks on your website. The problem with this is once you have lots of different plugins your website will get slower. You will also have to keep all of these plugins up to date.
Think carefully about which plugins you actually need to complete certain tasks. There is no denying the value that plugins can bring to your WordPress website, however, you need to be diligent with how many you use.
Conclusion
These are some of the most common WordPress mistakes made by beginners and experienced users of like. Make sure that you avoid these common mistakes and you’ll be well on your way to creating a successful WordPress website.
