Woeful WordPress Mistakes to Avoid at All Costs

Whichever way you look at it, WordPress has put the power of professional website development and management in the hands of more newcomers than any CMS to date. But just because WordPress is (in a comparative sense at least) an extremely simplified approach to website design, this doesn’t mean it’s impossible to go wrong.Quite to the contrary in fact as to assume that WordPress is 100% fool-proof it’s to quite dangerously fall into a false sense of security. And when this happens, the chance of falling foul of one of the following mistakes intensifies quite dramatically:   1 – Themes and Plugins From Dodgy SourcesSo right off the bat comes the mistake of assuming that if there is a theme or plugin available and it’s 100% free of charge, there’s really nothing to lose by giving it a go. After all, even if you decide not to bother keeping it, no harm done. Or at least that’s how it comes across, but in reality there is in fact a whole ocean of plugins and themes out there that are packed to bursting point with dangerous and malicious coding. Whether it’s illicitly messing around with your AdSense code, injecting spam links into your website or generally doing a number on your performance, themes and plugins from dodgy sources really should be avoided at all costs.2 – Failing To Back Up RegularlyThe only thing more devastating than having your WordPress site hacked half to death is realising that the attack took place at a time when you had forgotten (or simply couldn’t be bothered) to back things up for the last few months/years. You’d been getting by OK in something of an “it will never happen to me” method of operating, but it’s only a matter of time until this kind of nonchalance bites back…and hard!3 – Not UpdatingTry to remember that when updates appear for themes, plugins and WordPress itself, they appear for a reason. Updates tend to be rolled out on a relatively regular basis and it can sometimes be tempting to completely ignore them...especially if their frequency is beginning to annoy you. Nevertheless, updates are rolled out to patch and cover a wide variety of security issues and general performance bugs, the likes of which you’ll really wish you protect yourself from if you fall foul of one.4 – No SEO Plugins Search engine optimisation will for the foreseeable future at least play an enormous role in determining how successful or otherwise your website is. And while there’s a lot you can do to intensify your SEO efforts across every page of your WordPress website, you really cannot afford to overlook the importance of SEO plugins. There’s a near-endless catalogue of plugins available created specifically for SEO enhancement – many of which can make a significant difference with relatively little input required.5 – URL ChangesUpdating and editing old posts is standard practice for anyone interested in continually refining and enhancing the quality of their website’s content. However, one common mistake to avoid at all costs is that of changing the URL of any given page or post while editing it, as this will wreak havoc with the page that had already been indexed. All you’ll end up with for your effort is a broken link and a 404 error page…neither of which being particularly beneficial.