Common WordPress Mistakes & How To Fix Them

You’ve made it this far – you snagged the perfect domain name, you selected WordPress (a brilliant choice), and you’re ready to get your new website up and rolling. Or perhaps you’ve already set up your WordPress website but you’re afraid you’ve made some rookie mistakes.

Setting up your new website can be quite exciting, but it’s easy to make some simple mistakes if you aren’t careful. We know that you probably just want to jump right in, adding your content and trying to make it exactly how you want, but it’s easy to overlook or neglect some very important steps that need be addressed before you jump in with both feet and start writing your first web page or blog post.

The Biggest Mistake: Selecting Poor WordPress Hosting

We say it often when it comes to WordPress hosting – you get what you pay for. Before you even think about how to setup up your WordPress website, you need to decide who will be hosting your website. While it may be tempting to choose that ultra-affordable $5 per month plan, or even those enticing free plans – it’s ultra-important to remember that not all web hosts are created equal.

Take a few extra minutes and do some homework to find out the following about your WordPress host prospect.

• Does hosting include support and if so, how responsive and knowledgeable are their Techs?
• Do they cap your speed at any point?
• How quickly will your website load?
• Do they provide off-site backups?
• What security features are included with hosting?
• What features are only available a la carte or with ‘premium’ upgrades?

Need to fix this mistake? If you’ve already selected a WordPress host for your site and think you made a mistake, simply contact BionicWP for affordable, secure, professional, and expert WordPress hosting that includes everything above and much more.

WordPress Rookie Mistake #1

By default, WordPress is set up with the infamous “admin” username as the initial administrator account. Leaving this as is may seem like a simple and good idea, if some nefarious individual or shadow entity wants to hack into your website, the first username they’ll try of course is “admin”. If you leave this default in place then all the hacker has to figure out is your password – which can be much easier than you think!. When you set up your new WordPress website, make sure you’re using a username that’s not very obvious or easy-to-guess.

Need to fix this mistake? If you’re already using the “admin” default there’s not a reason to worry. We’ve laid out 10 quick steps below to remedy this and you can also follow them right from the start in order to avoid this issue altogether.

1. In the left-hand menu, hover over Users and click on Add New
2. Fill in all user fields
3. From the Role drop-down, select Administrator
4. Click on Add New User
5. Ensure that you now see your new admin username
6. In the top-right corner, hover over Howdy, admin and click on Log Out
7. Type in the new admin username and password that you created and click Log In
8. (Prior to this step, it is recommended that you backup your database just in case) In the left-hand menu, click Users and hover over the admin name and click Delete.
9. From the Attribute all posts drop-down, select your new admin name and click on Confirm Deletion.
10. Confirm that you now see the old admin user has been deleted, and you’re only left with the new administrator user, will all prior posts now attributed to it.

WordPress Rookie Mistake #2

No matter how cute you think it is, or how easy it is for you to remember, choosing a weak password for your admin account is a mistake you should avoid at all costs. You’d be seriously surprised by how many people that actually not only use the “admin” default, but they are brazen enough to use “password’ as their password. Using an easy-to-guess password, or one easily discerned by reading your social media profile and posts, should be avoided and immediately corrected, no matter how small or large your website and customer database are.

Need to fix this mistake? If you’re already using a weak password, there is a quick and simple fix.

1. Log in with your WordPress administrator account
2. Click on Users and then your administrator name
3. In Account Management click on the Generate Password button and a brand new, strong password will be generated automatically for you. You can decide to either use the one generated or create your own password here, just ensure that it stays “Strong” and you’ll fix this mistake in a matter of minutes.

WordPress Rookie Mistake #3

Another default setting in WordPress that easily gets overlooked by newcomers and veterans alike. Using ugly, nondescript, and unintuitive permalinks can affect both your amount of visitors and clicks for that link, as well as how the search engines perceive the link altogether. The words inside the web URLs are an indicator for your potential customers and search engines as to what that page or post is actually about.

Need to fix this mistake? If you’ve already been using the default WordPress permalinks, you don’t want to change the permalinks without first creating redirects for those previous links. You want visitors to automatically be taken to your new link and search engines to use the new link as well. In order to do this, you should set up 301 redirects for each of those pages and posts. This can easily be accomplished with a WordPress plugin such as the Redirection plugin. After you setup 301 redirects, you can change your Permalinks following these next instructions.

Prevent This Mistake From The Start! Once you’ve done the above, or you’re beginning the setup of your new WordPress website, you can change the permalink default quite easily.

1. Click Settings
2. Click Permalinks
3. Select “Post Name” (the default “Plain” option will de-select)
4. Click “Save Changes”

Avoid Mistakes With BionicWP

Mistakes are easy to fix when you have the right expert support behind you. With BionicWP you not only get 90-days worth of off-site backups, nulling the impact any mistakes can have on you and your website, but you also get WordPress experts that are available whenever you need support.

Don’t let a simple mistake or lack or knowledge ruin your day or your week. At BionicWP we bring you the tools, support, knowledge, and know-how to ensure that your WordPress site lives up to your dreams and desires. Contact us today to find out how affordable your business website can be and how easy it is to fix those simple mistakes with WordPress.