As the most widely used content management system on the web, WordPress is a fairly simple, easy to use platform. WordPress allows website owners to make most website content changes and updates without having to learn how to code HTML.
We LOVE the fact that all of our clients can update their own websites and add new pages and content themselves whenever they want — that’s why we build all of our custom websites on the WordPress platform.
But as easy as WordPress is to use, you can still screw up your site big time if you aren’t careful!
You see, WordPress gives you access to all areas of your site — content, code, functions, design files — and some of them you just shouldn’t mess with unless you really know what you’re doing.
As a WordPress web design company, we get to peek into the back end of WordPress websites around the world and we see all kinds of things that we’re appalled by, and we see sites we’ve built destroyed over time by bad practices — and that makes us want to cry!
So, here are 11 common ways we see website owners (or their virtual assistants) screw up their WordPress websites (Don’t do these):
- Using Dreamweaver to format website content and pasting the Dreamweaver code into WordPress (Yes, I know. It’s insane and I can’t believe it either)
- Using Microsoft Word to format content, then copying and pasting the content right into the WordPress visual editor, garbage code and all (Microsoft Word creates it’s own junk code)
- Editing the theme CSS file(s) or the Functions file on the live site and doing it without first backing up the site
- Creating sales pages as plain-old HTML pages instead of pages on your WordPress site
- Filling your hosting account with all different types of files, out of date WordPress installs for other websites
- Failing to update WordPress when new releases are available (WordPress Security Starts With You!)
- Publishing new content to the blog, but not defining the category, tags, HTML title, and meta description
- Adding new content to the site without formatting it for easy reading online, like using subheadlines, bulleted lists, and bold/italic formatting
- Forgetting to use the More tag to jump readers to the single post template
- Installing several plugins that all do the same thing and leaving them all activated
- Using plugins that are out of date and unsupported, or plugins that have known security issues
Unfortunately, there are a lot of service providers that say they know WordPress and call themselves WordPress experts — that really don’t know anything more than the basics of adding content.
They sell packages to maintain your site for you and publish your blog posts, etc. — but in reality, they’re setting clients up for potential disaster by making the site vulnerable to hackers, and silently sabotaging their clients’ success online by failing to optimize their blog posts.
They’re not creating vulnerabilities in your site or sabotaging your rankings on purpose — They probably added the service to their business because WordPress is hot topic and it’s an easy way to generate more income — and because they really do want to help. They just don’t know any better, which is part of the problem.
Do you know what’s really going on with your website? Is your site protected from hackers? Are you missing key opportunities to improve your search engine rankings?
If you’re not sure, maybe it’s time to take a closer look at your site. And if you want a second opinion, and you’d like a full website review and evaluation, please Contact Bourn Creative Today.
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