20 common mistakes with WordPress and how to avoid them
Making mistakes is completely normal. This is especially true when working with content management systems. You might say to yourself: “You learn from your own mistakes”. However, “modeling of excellence” is better for you and your project, as you can quickly learn from the mistakes of others and thus benefit from their experience. Read this article to find out how to recognize and avoid the 20 most common WordPress errors.
1. spending too much money
Before you start with a self-hosted WordPress, you need a web hosting package and a domain. None of this has to be expensive. For just a little money, you get a package that is perfectly adequate, especially for the start of your project. We recommend the web host “Alfahosting“, for example. Its “Multi L package” including domain costs just €2.99 per month. A major advantage of this is that you have access to very fast and reliable support should any problems arise. Inform yourself well before concluding a contract, preferably in the forums known for this purpose.
2. WordPress.org. or WordPress.com
It may be confusing at first that WordPress provides users with both a free version(WordPress.com) and a self-hosted version(WordPress.org). This can sometimes lead to confusion. If you are planning a smaller and simply structured blog, WordPress.com is definitely enough. This is particularly the case if you want to set up your online project more as a hobby and without major financial goals. If you want to make a financial profit and run your site professionally, the self-hosted version is essential. This gives you full control over your project and access to all plugins or themes.
3. use incorrect permalink structure
The lack of a proper permalink-structure is one of the most common mistakes when using WordPress. Many users completely ignore this point and leave it at the default settings provided by WordPress. Here is an example of an uncorrected permalink: www.example/?p=34. This is called a messy permalink. It has many disadvantages, both technical and practical. With a permalink, make sure that it contains the most important contains keywords and is short and meaningful at the same time. This is beneficial both for SEO and for the site visitor, who immediately knows what your post is about. A good permalink looks like this, for example: www.beispiel.de/fehler-wordpress-vermeiden. For a proper permalink structure, go to “Settings → Permalinks” and set the desired structure.
4. use WordPress themes from an unknown source
There are countless providers of free WordPress themes. Unfortunately, many of them are of poor quality and/or simply unsuitable. There is also the possibility that you select a theme that “infects” your website visitors with a Trojan. This happens through the use of malicious links by the theme. Play it safe: only install themes from a known source; for free themes, this would be WordPress.org and for premium themes, use the well-known providers – e.g. woodthemes.com.
5. ignore search engine optimization (SEO)
If you install WordPress, you can block your website from being indexed by search engines (such as Google). This function is often used when the page is still under construction and should therefore not be found. However, it is very inconvenient not to lift this block after the work has been completed. Your website will then remain permanently outside the Google index and will not be found. It is therefore essential to check that the check mark under “Settings → Read” is no longer set as soon as you have finished working.
It is also generally advisable to install an SEO plugin. The following are possible:
These will help you to make your article SEO-compatible right from the start.
6. do not create any backups
It is essential to create regular backups of the WordPress installation and database. But you can rest assured: There are plugins for this too. Once you have installed them correctly, they will do their job reliably. The so-called backup plugins offer you different solutions for saving the content of the website. We particularly recommend regularly backing up your data to a cloud provider such as Google Drive or Dropbox. The following backup plug-ins are particularly popular:
Especially if your website is ever damaged (e.g. B. by a hacker attack), you can repair the damage within a very short time thanks to regular backups. It should also be mentioned that there are very good professional providers of backup solutions. VaultPress from Automattic (the company behind WordPress) is a prominent example of this.
7. make the “white screen of death” mistake and panic
Do you work with Microsoft Windows? Then you are probably familiar with the “Blue Screen of Death”. This appears when Windows has a serious error and shuts down. The WordPress equivalent is the “white screen”, the screen remains completely white. This often occurs when reinstalling plugins or themes. The white screen means that an attempt is being made to use more of your website’s working memory (PHP memory) than is actually available. Two solutions are then available to you: Try increasing the memory limit in wp-config.php. This is possible as long as the storage volume allocated by the hoster has not yet been completely used up. Another option is to delete the theme or plugin using an (S)FTP account and then ask the hoster to increase the PHP memory limit for a fee.
8. renounce any form of security
Unfortunately, many operators of Word Press sites only think about the security of their project once there has been a hacker attack. It shouldn’t even come to that. You should therefore consider the following points:
- Install the “Limit Login Attempts” plugin
- Check your website regularly with Sucuri.net
- Install a free or paid backup solution (see point 6)
- Use a 2-factor authentication such as Google Authenticator
9. upload unsuitable images
An article is not attractive without pictures. However, many mistakes are made in this area in particular. The number of pixels and image files used are often far too high and too large. This slows down the entire page load dramatically! The visitor is annoyed by the long loading times and the search engines also penalize this circumstance. The loading speed of a website has been a ranking factor for some time now. Optimize all images for storage on the web before inserting them into your article. First, adjust them to the correct width. If the content area of your website is 640px, the images should also be cropped to a maximum of this size. Then save them for the web. This is done, for example, with tools such as TinyPNG or JPEG Mini. Programs such as Photoshop or Gimp (free software) are also ideal.
10. ignore WordPress updates
With a market share of around 66%, WordPress has recently become the most popular content management system in the world. It is understandable that hackers are also interested in this. As with Windows, regular security updates are therefore essential. Above all, because WordPress updates are to a large extent security updates, you should never use an outdated version, but always keep WordPress up to date. Finally, the security gaps of the previous version are also taken into account with every update. If you do without the updates, the risk of being hacked increases significantly. With the “one-click updater”, updates are very easy to handle.
11. ill-considered/rash change of domain
Are you looking for a new domain because you no longer like the one you originally chose? Then you may be tempted to quickly get a new domain and assign it to your website, which is almost child’s play. Without intensive preparation, however, you will lose visitors and money with such a hasty action, especially if you use the site as a source of financial income. Follow the numerous instructions on how a domain change works with WordPress closely. The net is full of them.
12. leave description “More WordPress blog”
In addition to the selectable title, WordPress also assigns a fixed description to each new WordPress page. The source code then says “Another WordPress blog”, sometimes this is even visibly indicated on your website. This is a disadvantage for indexing by Google and of course not very meaningful. Choose a description that arouses the reader’s curiosity and reveals what to expect on the new page. You can do this under “Settings → General” and then under “Subtitles”.
13. no installation of the comment spam plugin
The plugin against comment spam is one of the first plugins that experienced WordPress users install. If you don’t do this, your site will be infested with countless spam comments within a short time. To save yourself this dubious “pleasure”, we recommend installing the free plugin “Antispam-Bee”.
14. use archive widget for the sidebar permanently without own archive page
If you are at the start of a Word Press blog, you will benefit from the archive widget for the sidebar. It clearly shows the months in which you have published blog entries. However, once a year has passed, this construct becomes increasingly confusing; the sidebar simply becomes far too long. It is better to create your own archive page. This looks much more professional and you always have an overview of your blog behavior.
15. complete hardcoding in the theme
If you want to design your website with custom themes (modified or self-created themes) for the first time, it may seem tempting to code things directly in the theme and dispense with the mostly standardized WordPress tags from the outset. This is not wrong in principle, but it is much more complicated to administer. Please note that it is also not possible to transfer it to a new website in this way. It is therefore recommended that you first learn how to use WordPress coding standards and use the correct tags found in the WordPress codex.
16. deletion of the example page forgotten
During installation, WordPress not only creates an article, but also an example of a static page. Many users forget to delete this example page when creating a new website. The latter offers no added value for the reader, but is indexed by Google anyway. For Germany alone, a Google search brings up 163,000 results of such sample pages that have not been deleted.
17. prescribe with Microsoft Word
Are you one of those users who pre-write blog articles in Word and then copy them into the WordPress writing editor? The good news first: you are not alone! This approach is as common as it is unfavorable. This is because a lot of unnecessary characters are inserted into the source text and the visible article. This destroys the layout of the entry. There is a special button for inserting text elements from Word. However, it is advisable to write the posts in the WordPress writing editor or with an editor that only saves the plain text. These are, for example, Notepad or one of the various Markdown editors, such as MarkDownPad on Windows or ByWord on Mac. The advantages of WordPress’ own writing editor: It not only has automatic caching, but also revisions. This allows you to keep track of all changes and revert to an earlier version of the article if necessary.
18. do not install a statistics solution
Every website operator should know how their project is received. Use an analysis tool for this, such as
- Google Analytics or
- Piwik (an open source project).
This gives you countless opportunities to analyze your website, constantly improve it and be happy when the number of visitors keeps increasing. Incidentally, these tools display far more than just the number of visitors/clicks. We also recommend that you create an account for Google Webmaster Tools at the same time. Be sure to store a data protection declaration and observe the legal framework.
19. data update with the editor without FTP access
Quickly editing the theme’s functions.php or individual theme files seems to be a safe and simple matter with WordPress’ own plugin or theme editor. However, this function is very dangerous if you do not have (S)FTP access. If you forget just one comma or semicolon, a white page with an error message will be displayed instead of the usual website after saving. This can no longer be repaired without (S)FTP access. For this reason, it is advisable to dispense with the editor functions and to always carry out all modifications via (S)FTP access. In an emergency, you can then make immediate corrections and the website is quickly restored to its usual appearance.
20. not wanting to learn anything new is the biggest mistake
New plugins and solutions for various problems appear almost every day. These are intended to make life and work easier for you as a site operator and improve the functionalities. The worst mistake you can make is not wanting to learn anything new. So keep working with WordPress on a regular basis. Learn as much as you can about it. You, your website and your visitors will benefit!