WordPress is popular. Really popular.
From bloggers to Beyonce, tons of people have chosen to use WordPress as their website building platform.
Just how popular is it?
Well, specific stats vary depending on if we’re discussing self-hosted websites (~20% market share), or CMS platforms (over 50% market share), but suffice to say that a significant portion of the internet runs on WordPress.
These overwhelming numbers often lead novice site builders to jump right in – mistakenly – without considering some important details.
Let’s take a look at some of the most common pitfalls that people make when starting to build a WordPress site, so you can avoid making a similarly costly mistake on your own site.
Table of Contents
Common mistakes to avoid
Love at first site
Far too often, rookie site builders fall in love with a theme based on the first few page layouts they see and then start building without properly vetting the theme for all the features they are going to need.
Despite its popularity, WordPress is far from the easiest way to build a site, and changing themes can be really messy, so it’s crucial to pick a good one from the get-go.
While there are a staggering amount of plugins that you can install to your WordPress site, it’s much simpler to choose a theme that already incorporates the basic functionality that you have to have.
Also, many themes and plugins work well together – or don’t! Don’t be so hasty to get started that you overlook a key piece of what your site is going to need.
Take your time, sort through the many, many options that exist, and start to keep a list of your favorite contenders.
Then take some more time to look at other sites similar to what you want to build and make sure that the features you want are included in your favorite candidates, or eliminate them from the list.
It can be easy to be paralyzed by the sheer number of choices that you have to choose from when picking a theme, but if you do a little homework and decide what you need, you should be able to filter through the noise and find the right fit for you.
Plethora of problematic plugins
Okay, so you found a theme that works for your needs – fantastic! No matter how many great features your chosen theme has, you’re still going to need to use at least a few plugins to create your ideal website.
This is where WordPress presents a real double-edged sword: there are countless plugins available in their extensive and ever-expanding library, but quantity doesn’t entail quality.
Many sites are plagued by plugins that don’t play nice with each other – or simply don’t work with the theme that you’ve chosen so carefully.
This can lead to buggy UI, inaccurate data, and a host of other problems including website kryptonite – downtime.
Never install plugins with a low download count (one metric that can help identify problematic plugins) and never install more plugins than you actually need.
Also, make sure you don’t install plugins directly on your live site, always create a site backup before you install/activate, and regularly go through and remove unused or problematic plugins.
Overwhelming options
Both experienced and novice site builders alike fall for this trap: it’s easy to build up an idea in our heads about the perfect site that we want to build, but it’s an entirely different task to actually build such a site.
Keep it simple! Start slow, get comfortable, and build brick by brick.
In many cases, WordPress is unnecessarily powerful for the site you’re trying to build. Sure, it’s the go-to for large enterprises like TechCrunch, CNN, the NFL, and many others.
But if your site doesn’t require that level of complexity, it may be a better idea to go with one of the many popular website building platforms out there that are tailor-made for users of varying degrees of experience.
Wix has grown in popularity the past few years, along with other heavily-advertised brands such as Squarespace and Weebly, but there are other players that provide even more basic building blocks.
These types of website builder platforms are often more than enough for your needs, and can help you avoid being overwhelmed by the overload of options on a platform like WordPress.
Bottom line
Ultimately, the most important factor in choosing the right platform and avoiding common mistakes is you: mainly, your expertise level and your specific needs.
Make sure you don’t let other people make your decision for you. Take your time, think about what you want and how you can build it, and do the research.
It will be so much better to spend the time making the right decision now than to spend the time fixing mistake after mistake later.
Leave a Reply