8 Mistake WordPress Newbies Can’t Escape

1. Installing WordPress In a Sub-folder.

The common mistake is installing your wordpress blog in a Sub-folder such as /wordpress or /blog /myblog/ instead of installing it directly in your blog directory/root, if you install in a Sub-folder, your blog will be accessible via the Sub-folder i.e myblog.com/wordpress, and if you install in your blog root, it’ll just be accessible directly without appending any Sub-folder name i.e myblog.com. So, watch out so you wouldn’t make this mistake of deleting and installing again.

2. Not Using Permalink

Another common mistake is not setting up permalink structure for your WordPress blog all because you are new to the platform and don’t know how to, if you don’t set permalink structure, your blog url will be in default form i.e myblog.com/?p=123, You have to set your url structure to a SEO friendly format to improve your SEO.

To set up permalink for your blog, go to Settings > Permalink, and choose any structure apart from the example above.

3. Publishing Incomplete Post/Page.

Upon installing WordPress blog the next thing is updating your blog and there’s always a default sample page. Newbies might not know what they’ll write or how to use the text editor and that leads to publishing empty pages or empty post I.e coming soon page or under construction page, save yourself by not posting anything if you don’t know what to talk about rather than posting incomplete page or post which is useless and you will later delete it.

4. Installing Unnecessary Plugins.

When you don’t know what you are doing after installing WordPress is installing useless plugins all in the name of looking for what it does and one thing you might not be aware of is that, too much plugins slow down your blog, so be very careful what kind of plugin you install.

5. Not Updating WordPress.

New wordpress users would care less about updating their wordpress blog because they might find it annoying and don’t really know why they must update to the latest release. Meanwhile updating your wordpress keeps you safe because hackers can easily find loophole if your blog is not up to date, You need to take security measures into consideration. This allows important maintenance and security updates to be applied to your website as you sleep. Keep updating your wordpress to the latest release.

6. Using Weak Password.

Using strong password is a number one priority when it comes to keeping your blog safe, Newbies careless about strong password when they are installing WordPress, they’ll be in a hurry and after installation, they will forget to change their password from the easily guessed password they used earlier and that’s BOOM! they may never change it again. You need to make your password strong using the combination of (letters, alphabets, signs). There are lots of free software out there to generate strong and hard to guess password.

7. No Regular Backup.

One grave mistake website owner make and continues to make is failure to regularly backup their website. This is one mistake they continuously make until their website/blog is hacked. You don’t need to loose any data to learn you need to backup regularly, there are various plugin to help you backup on a schedule basis such as WordPress backup to Dropbox plugin.

8. Not Visiting WordPress Support Forum

What most Newbies don’t know is that solution to most of their problems has been solved on the wordpress support forum and none ever think of consulting the forum. There are a tons of tutorials and resources in their for the new WordPress users that should not be ignored.

This are all mistakes we can think of right now, is there any other mistake you know and it’s not on the list? Drop it in the comment box below.