Building a WordPress website is not free of human errors. Developers often tend to make mistakes that cause great security vulnerabilities, bad user experience, and slow performance in a website. If you want to make your WordPress website development process smooth and seamless, then it is important for you to understand where you repeatedly commit grave mistakes and how you can work on it to avoid them.
To assist you in this endeavor, UnityDiv has decided to bring a blog that will comprehensively discuss a few of the most common WordPress development mistakes. Not only that, you will here find the solutions to all the problems you encounter while building a website.
So, let’s start!
Avoiding Common WordPress Development Mistakes
Not Updating and Applying Security Patches
Updating your WordPress website is one of the most important things about WordPress website design. The sad truth is many developers skip this part and ultimately their website becomes susceptible to security hacks and infringements. That is why it is vital to stay up-to-date about WordPress core, themes, and plugins if you don’t want hackers to exploit the vulnerabilities of your site and launch a cyber attack on it.
According to the 2022 Hacked Website Threat report of Sucuri, 49.8% of the hacked websites are associated with outdated WordPress installations. This stresses the need to keep everything on your site updated regularly.
Remember, many updates are security patches, which help keep your website from being hit by malicious attacks. For that reason, the core, plugins, and themes should be always enabled to update automatically or manually. Indeed, keeping your WordPress website secure is essential, and requires regular maintenance.
Not Optimizing Images
Image optimization is a good thing to do for a good site speed and performance. Image files that are large can massively slow down your site, which is bad for both user experience and your site ranking in search engines. A slow-loading website can push visitors away and ultimately increase your website’s bounce rates and decrease your conversion rates.
This is even evident from GTMetrix research. According to it, optimized images can reduce page load time by up to 50%. Due to its increased importance in improving your website performance, image optimization must be made part of the WordPress website development process. But, the point here is how to optimize images. You can use Smush or EWWW Image Optimizer as image optimization tools and plugins. They will reduce the file size of the images to be uploaded by compressing them so that they do not sacrifice the quality of your website’s performance.
Neglecting BackUps
Website backups are not taken as seriously as they should be by many developers; due to which, data loss happens whether it is from human error, server failure, or malicious attacks. For example, according to Cybercrime Magazine stats, 60% of the small businesses that experience hacking close down within six months. Therefore, to avoid it, backup is your savior. For that, make good use of dependable plugins such as UpdraftPlus or VaultPress to keep a routine backup of your WordPress website.
Choosing Poor Hosting
The choice of a hosting provider has a huge impact on the performance and security of your website. But, unfortunately, many WordPress developers often go for cheaper and less reliable hosting services which might not be sufficient for the safety needs of a WordPress website. That is why it is important to find a good hosting provider who offers scalable hosting, expansive security, and is great at support. Let me mention some good hosting providers to rely on:
Poor Database Management
All your data which includes posts, pages, and user information is stored in your WordPress site’s database. When you don’t manage your database well, you start suffering performance issues as your site grows. That is why an unoptimized database with unnecessary data can over time slow down your site. To avoid it, you should regularly clean your database from unwanted post revisions, drafts, and unused tables. In this regard, WP-Optimize will be able to help you out.
Not Using SSL Certificates
Security is everything in the digital age. If you are running an e-commerce website where sensitive information like your credit card details are being exchanged between your websites and visitors, you must have an SSL certificate in place. Even Google has started ranking sites with SSL certificates higher than sites without. Now, what can you do to improve the mistakes related to it? Well, you can secure your user data by implementing SSL certificates on your website and help out with your SEO. You can get free SSL certificates from many hosting providers or from Let’s Encrypt.
Using Too Many Plugins
One of the greatest advantages of WordPress is the plugins. After all, they enhance the functionality of your websites by giving customization features and options. But hold on! It’s not all good here. Having too many plugins can slow down your website, even giving you compatibility problems. According to the stats of Malcare, almost 55.9% of the cyber attacks on WordPress websites have a direct or indirect relation with the use of vulnerable plugins. That is why it is highly important to use well-coded plugins created by reputable sources. Also, keep a regular habit of plugin audits to timely remove those plugins that are outdated or redundant.
Ignoring Website Speed
An important factor of website speed is deciding on the user experience and SEO. Remember, a slow website can turn away potential visitors and can affect your rankings in search engines. According to WP Rocket, e-commerce websites that load in 2 seconds or in much less time have a 2.5x higher chance of conversions than websites that take more than 5 seconds to load. All this necessitates that developers should use caching plugins such as W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache for the speed of your website. You can also select a reliable hosting service having caches located on the fast servers and content delivery network (CDN) support. This will help you make the load time of your website as fast as possible.
Final Thoughts
By remaining mindful of these common WordPress website development mistakes, you can build and maintain high-performing and robust. Through the above-given comprehensive guidance of UnityDiv, you will be able to save yourself from obvious pitfalls while at the same time improving the user experience and security of your website. However, implementation of the requisite things requires in-depth technical knowledge of website development which you can only get from professionals. Therefore, delegating your website development to a world-class website development agency like UnityDiv can ensure that your site is always updated, optimized, and backed up for effective website development creation.
So, choose UnityDiv and contact us now to get the best quote!
