Most Common WordPress Mistakes to Avoid

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WordPress is one of the most popular and widely used content management systems (CMS) today. A majority of people using WordPress make some very common mistakes, which might adversely affect the functioning of their blogs and websites. While it is not a new thing for a newbie to make some mistakes, some errors can literally put all your time and efforts to waste.

WordPress Mistakes

If you are creating a new WordPress website, here are some of the most common WordPress mistakes you definitely need to avoid.

Missed: Site Backup

A single crash can send your WordPress site down the drain if you forgot to back up the data in the site. Use plugins like WP-DB-Backup or other options like “Exports”, to take automated backups of your site at regular intervals.

You can also take manual backups from time to time. This would prevent the need to build your website back from scratch in case of a crash.

Missed: Plugins

WordPress has several plugins that can be extremely beneficial for your site. Here are 8 Professional And Useful Premium WordPress Plugins. While you may not end up with all the best plugins in one attempt, you would be able to identify which ones are more beneficial for your site with time.

Some of the best plugins you can opt for at the start include Contact Form 7, Google XML Sitemaps and Akistmet.

Missed: ‘Single Server’ Decision

Google’s Content Delivery Network ensures that your blog loads faster on any computer that searches it via Google. However, in the case of a non-WPWebHost user who might have trouble accessing your page, it pays to copy the content of your blog onto several mirror servers and content delivery networks around the world.

In addition to making it easier for a user from across the globe to view your blog, this would minimize the load time for your blog (as all requests would not be sent to the main server).

Missed: Mobile-Friendliness

In today’s world of smartphones, tablets and iPod touch, deciding to make your blog mobile friendly is a wise decision, and would attract even more readers to your blog (especially from the ‘website accessing via smartphone’ sector).

You can either use a plugin called WPtouch to customize your WordPress site for smartphones, or choose a theme that is already customized to work on smartphones and tablets.

Missed: Friendly Permalink Structures

The default settings are not feasible enough for the integration of your blogs with different search engines. So just posting a blog and waiting for it to attract readers would do you no good. You would have to customize the settings with the help of keywords in the permalink structure in order to make your blogs more search engine friendly.

And you can do that by going to ‘Options’, selecting Permalinks in the Admin Panel, and entering “/category/postname/post_id” in the Custom Text Box.

Missed: Online Identity

A blog with just a name would only create a flutter. Couple that with a Gravatar (Globally Recgonised Avatar) of yourself, and your blogs would start attracting more readers.

A Gravatar is typically an image that appears next to your blog’s comment section, representing you to the online world. The Gravatar acts like Google Authorship in getting the necessary attention for your blog and site.

Missed: Google Authorship Markup

Another way to represent yourself globally! The Google Authorship Markup would be an image/avatar of yourself that appears right next to the Meta description that is displayed in the search results.

Readers searching for your blogs via Google would therefore get results with your image/avatar, thereby making it easier for your posts/blogs to get recognized instantly.

Missed: Integration with Webmaster Tools

Submitting an XML sitemap to Google Webmaster tools would help index all the pages on your site, thereby keeping a track of whatever additions or changes you make to it.

Webmaster tools also help generate the necessary statistics for your site, and help you find out ways to better its performance.

Missed: Analytics Program

An analytics program like Google Analytics would keep a measure of the traffic your website generates, as well as the specific keywords that bring this traffic to your site.

This in turn would enable you to keep notes on the areas that need improvisation, while finding out ways to increase the overall performance of your site.

Missed: Using Default Favicon

It would look quite unprofessional if you choose to use the default favicon (the icon that represents your website, and is usually displayed next to the page title in the tab, the browser’s address bar, and right next to the page name in the bookmarks list) to represent your website.

Create your own favicon by looking up a ‘free favicon generator’ on the internet.

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Vishal Gaikar

Article by Vishal

Vishal Gaikar is a professional blogger from Pune, India. If you like this post, you can follow him on Twitter.

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