While it’s true that choosing WordPress as a CMS can help you to reduce the cost of your website development, there are several things that must be taken care of, in case of a WordPress website.
In this blog, I’ve shared 6 mistakes that you must avoid in order to maintain the performance of your website.
#1 Not changing the username “admin”
Are you using “admin” as a username for logging in your WordPress website?
Don’t do this mistake!
The very first attempt that a hacker does while getting into your website is trying to log in with username “admin”. And if your website admin has username as “admin”, the half job of this hacker is already done.
Let’s put it this way. The hacker needs 2 critical information about your website which is “username” and “password”. If the username of your website is still “admin”, the hacker just needs to figure out the password only, in order to enter your website.
So, you must always ensure that the username of your WordPress CMS is changed to a customized username which must be hard-to-guess for the hackers.
#2 Installing too many plugins
This is one of the mistakes that you or your website developer may have made while developing your website.
Too many plugins on any WordPress website can affect its performance in long run.
Here are few things that you can do to reduce the number of plugins on your website.
- Make sure that there is no plugin that’s installed & activated on your website which is of no use.
- Don’t add different plugins for each feature. Instead, try to find out some plugins that can incorporate multiple features.
#3 Ignoring website's performance
If your WordPress website has been showing some signs of low-performance, you must not ignore it. You need take an immediate action to resolve the issue(s).
Here are but some of the major signs that your website may show as signal of low performance:
- Slow loading webpages
- URLs redirection issue
- PHP code warnings on webpages
- Malicious infection threats on browsers such as Chrome
If you see any of the above mentioned issues, you must take an action to fix them immediately. You can also consider to hire a WordPress developer to fix these problems.
#4 Not taking regular backups
Taking regular backups of your WordPress website is very crucial. Having a backup of latest version of your website will always help you to restore it, in case of any unforeseen circumstances such as server crash.
There are several free & paid plugins that are available for your WordPress website to backup your website regularly. Some of them being:
- UpdraftPlus
- BackupBuddy
- Duplicator
There is another way to backup a website on regular basis. You can also subscribe for a backup plan with your web hosting company by paying a nominal amount of money to them every year.
BTW, there are many web hosting companies that provide backup services as a part of their web hosting package.
#5 Managing the website security yourself
This is another mistake that many webmasters do.
Most of the webmasters try to save their money by managing the security part of their websites themselves.
Although it’s good to learn website development and take care of minor issues yourself, but when it comes to security, you must hire a professional WordPress developer to take care of it.
There are many steps that are required to secure a WordPress website and you must rely on a professional website developer to perform these steps for you.
#6 Not maintaining the website regularly
Website is not a one-time thing. You can’t build it and forget it. You do need to maintain your website regularly.
A WordPress website must be maintained in order to ensure that:
- All of the plugins are updated.
- The theme is updated regularly.
- The contents is updated as and when required.
- All the webpages are being audited for broken links.
- The loading speed of the website is optimised.