Making mistakes is a share of creative occurrences. While you start to develop something from the start, you are liable to make some mistakes. It might happen that many times you end up with the same issues as before. To save time and effort, it is required you to become familiar with them and learn some ways to eliminate issues. Developing a website is not distinct as you will continue operating into some common WordPress development mistakes.
Do you also question yourself why WordPress is so complicated? Mistakes can happen by experienced personnel or the new bee. By making mistakes, we tend to grow and learn through our WordPress development mistakes. Most of these WordPress development mistakes happen due to development errors like some occurring due to wrong configurations. Some might take place due to simple forgetfulness.
Most Common WordPress Development Mistakes
Intentionally or unintentionally, you might end up with one of these mistakes listed below. It would be great to try and remember these issues and learn the best ways to avoid them. It will make the development part faster and allow you to finish a site without repeatedly dealing with the same problems. Let us look at these mistakes and learn how the WordPress developer team can avoid them.
1. Avoiding Back-up of WordPress Data
All the WordPress users who forget to back up their data end up losing it. Anything online can be missed due to human errors, hacking attempts, theft, and other problems. Data loss can make your website impracticable. In case if you don’t have important backups, then recovering your website data can become an impossible task for you. When website data can’t be restored, it means that you have permanently lost all your valuable content. Now you have to start producing the content and invest time in building traffic and domain authority.
No need to worry, as this solution is just to set up automated backups for your website. There are various WordPress backup plugins available in the market from which you can choose. Some of these popular plugins are UpdraftPlus, BackWPup, and BackupBuddy. Further, check whether the backup plugin you install enables automatic backups or not. Also, make sure that you store your backup files in a remote location and not on your web hosting server. Keeping your backups on a server means that they are also gone if you lose your website data. Rather you can store your backups in a cloud storage service like Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, or Box. Several plugins enable you to save your backups in a remote location automatically.
2. Making Use of Non-Friendly Theme
A non-friendly theme does not modify to work while swiftly going through your website from a phone or tablet. Suppose your WordPress projects for practice are not responsive to most browsers and screen sizes. You might end up losing the web traffic that would have come from mobile devices. It would be very unfortunate that users to come up on your website for the first time and not have a great experience for the first time.
Fortunately, most of the WordPress themes are mobile-friendly. Google provides a simple, quick, and easy tool to lead a mobile-friendly test with your URL. As this is your website, it would be best to check that your website responds well on mobile devices. Apart from this, also look out for outdated plugins, bad code breaks, and many more, as these can have major effects on the responsiveness of your websites. Read more on common WordPress errors and how to fix them.
3. Choose an Economical WordPress Website Development Services
Several ways could help you to save money while developing a WordPress website, but opting for a free or affordable WordPress host is not always one of these options. A cheap WordPress host might not provide the same security and features as pricer web hosting servers. While you are looking forward to choosing your WordPress development provider, examine the features that are significant to you, like security, technical support, load times, and automatic backups. Thus start with your research and compare available host providers before setting up your WordPress website.
As discussed earlier, automated backups are significant, so you don’t end up losing your website data. Strong website security and technical support are crucial as you do not have to lose your website to take out time to study various custom cms development companies to select the right options as per your needs.
4. Making Use of Several Plugins
WordPress development plugins are significant in operating your website. These plugins provide various solutions starting from security plugins to contact form plugins. At the same time, these plugins can turn out to be very effective and efficient in operating your website. Using these many plugins can lead to several issues, including website crashes, security breaches, and slow loading speeds.
In the process of advanced WordPress development, to avoid these issues, it is recommended for you to install the WordPress plugins you require. There is no set of specific rules on what would be the ideal number of plugins. A good rule of thumb is only to install honorable ones that benefit you and your website visitors. Here are certain criteria that need to be considered while verifying a plugin:
- Look out for the latest plugin update. Suppose the last updates took place a year ago. It would be outdated, so don’t install it. Thus search for the plugins that are updated weekly or monthly.
- Look for the total number of downloads and go through the reviews. You can search for reputable plugins with thousands of downloads and at least 4 stars for most parts.
- Look at the “Support” tab for each WordPress plugin description, as you would require some support when issues take place with the plugin. Do not download the plugin if the support tab does not take you to a support page.
5. Avoiding Plugin Updates
Outdated plugins can cause various problems. Starting from website crashes to reduced website speed, dishonest plugins can also bargain your website’s security. Your WordPress developer team launches regular updates that would consist of codes that would fix holes in a plugin’s security. It is one of the reasons why it is a good idea to update your WordPress plugins as soon as they are launched. You can search for these under the updates section of your dashboard. You should also look out for whether or not a specific plugin can be set to update a plugin automatically.
6. Deleting Your WordPress Database
Your advanced WordPress development comprises all your content and settings, links, plus comments and posts that users made on your website or blogs. There are various incidents where it might make sense to delete your database. Thus don’t delete your WordPress database without assuring that you have backed up all your content. It is quite significant, and by chance, if you accidentally delete your database, you can restore your data from your most recent backup.
If you want to restore your deleted database from the backup drive, you can use the phpMyAdmin program from your web hosting server. If this is above your capabilities, contact technical support. The WordPress developer team should be able to walk you through how to back up your database successfully.
7. Avoid Updating your WordPress Core
WordPress for developers core is a term that applies to all the files that you can download from WordPress.org to operate your WordPress website. These files enable users to access the admin dashboard, manage users, upload media files, tags, and categories, delete content, and many more. Advanced WordPress development will share the core updates to assure that WordPress websites continue to run properly. WordPress core updates deal with the latest security threats and functionality uses, and these can also incorporate exciting new features.
You can update the WordPress core files from the dashboard; while the latest version is launched in the market, you’ll see a new version banner link on top of the admin area. Further, click on the “Update now” button, and you are all prepared to go.
8. Updating WordPress Website at the Wrong Times
One of the most common WordPress development mistakes includes updating the website at the wrong times as updates are released to solve security issues by others. Thus you should update your website to the latest version of WordPress as soon as you see the update pop-up when you hold on too long to update. You may leave your website vulnerable to the security issues that the update was supposed to fix. It can lead to major problems, like losing the content of your website, getting hacked, or getting your crucial information stolen. Therefore regularly check on your dashboard for the latest WordPress updates, and you’ll typically see a new version banner when one is available.
9. Avoiding Uninstalling Unused Plugins
As mentioned earlier, various unutilized plugins can produce website crashes, security breaches, and slow load times. All of it can reveal your website and your data to theft or permanent loss. You can look at which WordPress plugins are being utilized manually or a plugin-like plugin activation status that will cater to you with the two lists. One of those plugins that are active somewhere and those that are currently not being used. You have to go to the Plugins tab on your WordPress dashboard and delete or deactivate the WordPress plugins utilized. Read more on advanced WordPress resources to advance your development skills.
Conclusion
By the end of this article, you must have been aware of all the basic WordPress development mistakes that a new bee and a present WordPress user can eliminate while developing and managing a WordPress website. There are no limitations for committing mistakes, even if you delete a post or an image. Deleting a post or deleting a website are considered mistakes. But here in this article, we have listed some of the common WordPress mistakes committed by most developers. So you can look at these WordPress development mistakes and consider them while developing a new website.
Suppose you need any further help related to your WordPress website design, maintenance, and support. You can also reach out to top WordPress website development services that can help you develop revenue-generating WordPress websites for your business ideas.
