WordPress is a great platform for websites and blogs. It’s simple to use, has great search engine optimization, and makes it easy for users to comment on your pages. However, if you’re new to coding or website development in general, building your site with WordPress can be challenging. Many developers find integrating WordPress into existing sites more difficult than first anticipated. Many developers new to WordPress end up making common mistakes that either break their site or make updating it later almost impossible. If you’re thinking of developing your wordpress development service, here are some things you want to avoid at all costs:
Using Bad Code Or Out-of-Date Software
Bad code or out-of-date software are two of the biggest mistakes you can make when developing with WordPress. These errors can be very time consuming to fix, or may even cause permanent damage to your site. Bad code can come from several sources. It can be bad code you’ve written yourself, code that’s been taken from an out-of-date code library or even code that’s been copied and pasted from another website that contains malicious code.
Out-of-date software, on the other hand, can cause all sorts of issues. It can affect how your site looks, how quickly it loads, and even how it functions. Out-of-date software can also make your site vulnerable to hacking and malware attacks. Updating your core WordPress software, themes, and plugins regularly can help avoid these issues.
Not Having a Responsive Design
A lot of people build their sites using the responsive design setting in WordPress. While this is a good way to build your site initially, it’s important to remember to disable this setting before you launch your site or you could have major problems on mobile devices.
The reason for this is that the responsive design setting resizes your website for different screen sizes, but it doesn’t change the look at all. This can make your website almost unusable for mobile readers. Having a responsive design is a good idea, but only if your theme is built to be responsive. If you want your site to be usable on all devices, you need to make sure it’s built with a responsive design.
Not Caching Your Site
Caching is one of the easiest and most effective ways of improving your site’s speed. Having a cached site means your site loads quickly, which is especially important for your blog posts where speed can determine whether people read your content or not.
While WordPress caches your site by default, having a good caching plugin can make a major difference. Caching your site is easy and can make a big difference to the speed of your site. However, it’s important to remember to clear your site’s cache occasionally. Caching your site can mean that when you make changes to your site, they don’t appear immediately.
Over-Using Custom CSS
Overuse of custom CSS can cause you several problems. The first issue is that it can break your site when you try to update it. When you make changes to your CSS, you often have to search through the entire code to find where that particular style is applied. If you have a lot of custom CSS throughout your site, this can be time-consuming and difficult to do without breaking your site.
It can also make your site difficult to update in the future if you can’t remember where certain styles are applied. Another issue with using lots of custom CSS is that it can affect your site’s speed. While having a slow site is better than having no site at all, it’s worth taking the time to keep your CSS usage to a minimum.
Not Keeping Your WordPress Core Up-to-date
If you’re building your site on an older version of WordPress, you’re putting yourself at risk. New versions of WordPress come with new features, security patches, and lots of improvements. Keeping your core WordPress software up-to-date is a simple way to make sure you’re protected. Unfortunately, it’s common for web developers to install WordPress, build a site on an old version, and then forget to update it.
If you do this, you’re putting yourself, your site, and your users at risk. Several security issues have been discovered in older versions of WordPress, and you could be attacked without even knowing. If you don’t keep your site’s software up-to-date, you could be at risk of being hacked. Keeping your core software updated is one of the easiest ways to protect yourself and your users.
Conclusion
WordPress is a great option for developers who want to build a site quickly and easily. However, it’s important to remember that it comes with certain limitations and can only do so much. If you need a complex site that has a lot of custom functionality, you’re probably better off building it from scratch. When developing your site, make sure you avoid these common mistakes at all costs. Using bad code, having an out-of-date site, not caching your site, and not keeping your WordPress core up-to-date can cause a lot of problems down the road.
