Blogging is a process of learning, everyone learns from previous mistakes. In the case of WordPress, the primary focus of a novice is to set everything up and get things running as soon as possible. In this hurry, there are quite a few things that are ignored which may lead to numerous security vulnerabilities and affect your blog/site in the long run. In this article, I’ve outlined 10 of the most common WordPress mistakes that almost every one of us makes in the beginning.
Installing WordPress Themes/Plugins from a Bad Source
There are plenty of websites available that provide free download links to premium themes and plugins. The important question is that, Why would someone out there will give you a premium or paid stuff for free of cost. The answer is simple, they are using your site as their income source.
To avoid this common WordPress mistake, if you cannot afford a premium theme, you can choose a free theme from a well-known source like WooThemes.
No Backing up WordPress Files
You can’t predict when will a hacker attack your blog. If someone hacks your blog you will loose everything. If you are regularly taking the full backup of your site, even if someone attacks, you can restore your files without losing any data.
So it’s important to have a recent backup of your website. You should backup the WordPress files and WordPress database. You should also make sure the database backup is not corrupt, which can occur. There are a variety of plugins which work – some free and others paid. I recommend trying out UpdraftPlus or BackupBuddy. These plugins backup your site on a regular basis, allowing you to keep attention focused on more important things.
Using “Admin” as Your User Login
When WordPress is installed, an administrator is required to control the site. It allows site owners to get WordPress up and running without dealing with database creation and sending files over FTP. The issue with some of these quick install programs is they don’t allow users to change the default WordPress administrator username during the installation, it’s just “admin.” The “admin” username is a hacker’s paradise. It’s the default, so if they want to try and hack into your site, they only need to guess your password.
No doubt, you need to change it immediately. There are a number of ways to do it, but the easiest is to just create a new user, delete the admin username and re-attribute posts to your new name.
Ignoring WordPress Updates
It is necessary to keep WordPress version, plugins and theme up to date. The version of WordPress updates in a regular manner to make it more user-friendly, secure and powerful. With the update of WordPress version, developers also update their plugins and themes to overcome the compatibility issues. Failing to update these keeps you away from using new features added by WordPress and eventually making it harder to use and vulnerable enough to attacked by hackers.
Action step: Always keep your site up-to-date by installing the latest updates. Just make sure to back it up before you do!
Lack of Site Security
With so many blogs and sites running on WordPress, you can imagine how many are hacked on a daily basis. WordPress itself is relatively secure, but when you add plugins to your site, your site’s security is compromised. Plugins are great, but not everyone is coded properly or secure, unfortunately.
So use a plugin to lock down your login page and/or create a lock down wall to increase the security of your site and lessen the chances of it getting hacked.
Not Setting Up The Permalinks
A permalink is a permanent static hyperlink to a specific blog post in your WordPress blog. You would probably have noticed that WordPress default permalink structure is something like www.yoursite.com/?p=123. Not only does this look awkward, but also bad for SEO and users.
A user and search-engine friendly permalink structure doesn’t only help you get ranked higher in search engines, but also shows your professionalism to your readers. After you’ve installed WordPress, never forget to make changes to your permalinks structure, by going under Settings » Permalinks. To get the most out of your SEO efforts, use appropriate keywords in your permalink structure.
Ignoring Image Optimization
One of the worst mistakes we all make is often forgetting to optimize images, while publishing an article. Especially, beginners don’t care at all about it. If you want to make your WordPress site load faster, then make image optimization your first priority.
Using HD images can have a tremendous impact on your site speed, while optimized images can improve the overall performance of your site in a dramatic way. So don’t forget to optimize images before uploading them to your WordPress site.
Using Too Many Plugins
When using a plugin, you should make sure you need it. There is no definite amount of how many plugins WordPress can handle, but just because a WordPress plugin is available, doesn’t mean you need it. Often website owners use too many plugins that are poorly coded leaving their website slow or because they have too many plugins installed, they have a hard time keeping them all up-to-date, which leads to an insecure WordPress installation.
Using The Default Favicon
The Favicon is considered as the identity card of your website. It’s a little icon associated with your site, typically displayed in the browser’s address bar or next to the site name in a list of bookmarks. Mostly WordPress newbies ignore their favicons, so their blogs/sites usually have favicons displayed by WordPress as default, or provided by their Theme Company or Web Hosting Provider.
To look more professional, you really need to change your favicon right now if you haven’t already. You can either make a favicon by yourself, or create one using one of the free favicon generators available around the web. Once you’ve generated your favicon, you need to upload it in the images section of your theme in order to replace the default one.
No XML Sitemap
Sitemap is basically a list of contents & their links in XML format which tells the Google or other search engine bots about each URL: when it was last updated, how often it changes, and how important it is in relation to other URLs in the website. It is necessary for faster indexing of your posts and pages. Not providing an XML sitemap is another mistake done by newbies. There are plenty of plugins for generating an XML sitemap for you. You may use the sitemap feature of WordPress SEO by Yoast or Google XML Sitemap plugin.
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