Top 10 biggest mistakes on WordPress websites
WordPress is a great software platform to use for your website. It offers a huge range of theme software as well as brilliant plugins that keep everything safe and secure.
However, it’s easy to end up with a badly configured WordPress site. At FIGA Digital, we come across this time and time again. It means we often need to take over these websites and make some pretty important changes.
So what are the ten most common mistakes that lead to problems with WordPress websites?
- You don’t have the right security in place.
If you haven’t activated a proper security plugin, this will mean your website is vulnerable to hacking and sabotage.
- Your login’s not set up properly.
It’s important to ensure you have a limiter in place to control the number of times someone can attempt to login without being locked out.
- The user names and passwords on your site are not secure.
WordPress websites can be hacked by a huge number of people, bots and other malware. They often get through because the user name and password is too weak and very easily hacked. It’s important to remember to use different passwords for each online account and don’t use people’s names or special dates. Try to use syllables or acronyms and use combinations of upper/lower case letters, numbers and special symbols.
If hackers get into your WordPress site, they can play havoc. If you have a link to AdWords, they can do even more damage as they can adjust your campaigns to spend more.
- Backup systems aren’t working properly.
One of the most frustrating things about WordPress is it doesn’t include data backup on its main platform. It’s easy to install plugins that deal with this important aspect of your site, but have you checked that they are properly configured to fit your needs?
Furthermore, unless your plugin backs up automatically, you may have to remember to backup your data regularly.
- Your website runs too slowly
It’s worth checking that your hosting isn’t interfering with the load time of your website. We often find that weak hosting can have a huge impact on website performance.
- Image sizes are too big
Are the images you’ve uploaded to your website too large? It’s easy to make this mistake and it can really slow the loading speed of your site. This leads to a frustrating user experience.
- Your plugins are out-of-date
It’s vital to ensure that all the plugins on your site are up-to-date and the latest version. This is because out-of-date plugins are a security weakness and can break when newer versions of WordPress are released.
- Your theme is too old
Keep an eye on updates to your theme software and make sure you activate them. Always make a full backup of your website before you do this.
- The product code isn’t registered.
Make sure the relevant product code has been registered - this will entitle you to support from the author.
- You didn’t properly test your website.
It’s so important to test your site after every change you make. We often see features that don’t work e.g. contact forms that don’t send, broken links, corrupt images etc.
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Whatever your WordPress issue, FIGA can help. You’ll benefit from high level expertise that ensures your WordPress website is well designed, easy to navigate and runs without any problems. We also offer hosting that automatically provides full backups and good levels of website speed.
Find out more by calling us on Freephone +44 (0) 800 802 1968 or email us on info@figadigital.com
