5 Mistakes That a WordPress Beginner Should Avoid
It may certainly be exciting to build a whole website using WordPress, but what if you don’t know certain things that could mar all your efforts? To avoid such mistakes, perhaps you should be aware of what they could be. Avoidance of WordPress beginner mistakes can save you time while building the site and keep you from being unduly aggravated.
5 WordPress Beginner Mistakes You Can Avoid
1. You don’t back up your site often enough
Consider a situation when your website is hacked and your data were stolen or lost. What would you do? Certainly, you’d create a back up of all your data. So, why not do it now while you create a new website? You can use the free “WordPress Backup to Dropbox” plugin which will keep your data safe from all hacking. Alternatively, you can choose to go with two-step authentication. This will keep your data safe from cybercriminals.
2. Not removing broken plugins
When choosing a plugin for your site, you can check whether it works or not by the star rating it receives in the Plugin library. Even after this, plugins you choose may not work, something you will never know until you try them. You can also Google the plugin to know its contemporary status. Once you know this, you needn’t install and activate it and then deactivate and delete it.
3. Opting for the wrong platform
Beginners always confuse between using a self-hosted WordPress site or free WordPress.com. Often, users want to create something as simple as a personal blog. Others set up a free WordPress.com site because they want total control over the site, and so they add plugins. This is one of the most common mistakes young users make.
4. Leaving incomplete pages
Webmasters are usually annoyed by this. When beginners build web pages and leave them unfinished at the time of going live, it sends a message to the world out there that your website isn’t being maintained. Consequently, they just move away from your site and you lose precious traffic.
5. Ignoring the use of Google Analytics and checking your statistics overly
When you create your WordPress site, Google Analytics should always be by your side as it gives you loads of insights regarding the traffic coming into your site and how users are interacting with your content. If users don’t interact with your content the way you envisaged, Google Analytics will help you make relevant changes that will improve your overall performance.
Also, it’s not necessary for you to check your stats over and over again. You needn’t go crazy finding out the statistics every so often. This is because it can take a bit of time before a new website starts receiving a good volume of traffic, and for this, much depends on your marketing strategies and how fierce your competition is. It’s enough to check from time to time so that you don’t feel discouraged if your statistics are not as good as you would like them to be.
Conclusion
Everyone makes beginner mistakes, so doing the same here isn’t unusual. Whether you manage a website or run a blog, you have a lot to take care of and one year down the line, you’ll notice significant changes in the way you perceive the world. But, remember to keep a keen eye on your site and how you manage it so that it seems worth the effort you’ve put in to create it. Of course, as you learn more about WordPress and managing your site, you will find that each site you build will be much better than the one before it. After all, great lessons are learned when you make big and small mistakes.
Author Bio
Christopher Meloni is a Marketing Manager at Kodematix. Apart from his profession, he also has a passion for blogging and he likes to explore new and innovative methods of marketing within his field. Connect with Christopher on Twitter.