WordPress is the world’s most popular open-source content management system (CMS), built on PHP and MySQL. Whether you want to launch a personal blog, business website, or online store, WordPress is a beginner-friendly choice that offers flexibility and ease of use.
However, many beginners make common WordPress mistakes that cost them time, money, and frustration. To help you get started smoothly, here are 10 beginner-friendly WordPress tips that will help you build a better website, avoid technical pitfalls, and boost your site’s performance.
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WordPress is an open-source content management system, and it is based on PHP and MySQL. It is currently the most popular platform for building websites. So WordPress is currently the first choice for beginners in website building.
But in using WordPress, many people make some common mistakes, especially beginners. So they sometimes lose a lot of time and money recovering from those mistakes. To avoid those common mistakes, I will provide you with some advice in this article that will save both your time and money.
Here are ten tips for you if you are a beginner and planning to make your website and blog using WordPress.
Firstly, to work with WordPress you need to pick up the theme which is most suitable for you and your business. It can be a bit of a difficult task because there are thousands of themes out there to choose from.
So, just simply choose such a theme that is simple but has a good number of features. Avoid themes that have too many fancy images or designs. The good news for you is that these themes are extremely customizable.
So after choosing your theme, you can totally customize it according to your needs which will make the theme more perfect for you and your business. They are also user-friendly, which means it does not require any developing knowledge to customize the theme.
They are easily affordable within your budget and have a great support forum through which you will get any kind of help or support if you face trouble using your theme.
For any kind of website owner, your goal is surely to get more visitors and traffic. So the most popular way to draw more customers and readers is by using Search Engine Optimization, also known as SEO, with your website, which will optimize your website to rank higher on the search engines.
And WordPress already does a good job integrating SEO what you need to do is download an SEO plugin for your website, and there are many SEO plugins available in WordPress from which you can choose.
The most used and popular SEO plugin is Yoast, and it can be a great start because it is an all-in-one solution having a very user-friendly interface.
To install it, first go to the “Plugins” option in your WordPress menu, then choose “Add New”. It will take you to a page where you can search for plugins.
In the search box, type the keyword “SEO”, and all the SEO-related plugins will show up. From there, you can choose the plugin of your choice and start using it instantly.
When you share a link of any post from your page to any social media like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc, these services pick up the title and description for the link that you share.
And also, when someone searches in the search engine and your page shows up, the title and description are the only visible things that decide whether they will click your page or not.
So the page title is a very important element when it comes to search engines. So to attract more audiences and visitors to your page, the page title and the description are your keys, and you should make them as attractive as possible.
Images are another important element of your website. Without images, you cannot think of a website that can attract clients properly.
It adds beauty and professionalism to your website. Images can do your search engine optimization job for your page, too if you include keywords for your images and you can do that for all of your images specifically.
The title of your image will appear when someone hovers over your image and they can simply get a description within a sentence or within a few words.
And if, for any reason the image gets unavailable or the users use such a device that is unsupported, they will see an alternate text.
And also, the image should be related to your description. If you use any irrelevant images, that will make the user lose interest in your website. So you should be very careful in choosing your images.
The WordPress platform is such an open-source platform that will allow you to develop your website without having any technical experience. Among many editors, the Visual Composer is the best of them all because it lets you add your content without any hassle.
It also has a drag and drop feature which will let you create your website by just dragging and dropping the specific elements that you want and thus creating websites is now easier than ever. So with the help of WordPress user , Can create, customize and modify their website very easily.
So that means a beginner can also create a website without having any coding knowledge. However, you should have a basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, and PHP.
Because if you do not have the basic knowledge of those languages, you will not be able to use any other options except the formatting option of Visual Composer. But the understanding of HTML and CSS will give you the freedom to style it just how you want.
Permalinks are web addresses that are used to link your content. The URL of each post should be permanent, and they should never change. That is why it is named permalink. In WordPress, a permalink structure is very important for SEO purposes.
To create the structure, you need to provide your links from the common settings. You can also choose the custom URL structure for custom URLs. To adjust the permalink is very simple; you just need to go to the WordPress settings and choose “Permalinks” and then you have to select “Post Name”.
If you are new to WordPress, it is a very important task to back up your website from time to time. Keeping backups regularly will ensure you start from right where you left in case you lose any data or if you face hacking or spamming.
For backing up professionally, you can choose a WordPress hosting provider that offers backup services. It can be a good way because most of the hosting providers provide auto backups that make a copy of your website almost every day.
Another way is the manual backup. You can backup your website manually by using an FTP server, or else you can download a backup plugin.
Keeping yourself updated with the latest version of WordPress is the first step to keeping your website secure because WordPress regularly launches new versions to provide you with the best security.
However, WordPress websites can still be hacked if you are not focused on your website security. With the improvement of security, hackers have also introduced new techniques to gain access to your websites, and the most commonly used technique is the brute force attack. What it does is, it will try to gain access to your website continuously.
To prevent this from happening, you must use a very strong password consisting of capital and small characters, including numbers.
You can also set a two-factor authentication system for your website, and with this, you will be able to recover your website in case someone takes control of it. You can also limit how many times someone can attempt to log in.
Google Analytics and dashboards can give you extra benefits for your website when it comes to tracking, traffic, visitor, bounce rates, and much more.
Unfortunately, these features are not available built-in with WordPress. But there are many plugins available in WordPress that you can use to have all those features work with your WordPress website.
The best way is to integrate your website with Google Analytics. It will provide you with a dashboard and other features that you can use to keep track of your website and its analytics.
It is very common in WordPress to get attacked by spammers. Spamming in WordPress has become a very common thing, and that is why you need to be always ready to prevent your website from spamming.
Spammers can spam your website with junk content and comments, which may lead you to unexpected situations.
And that is why what you need to do is use different anti-spam WordPress plugins like iThemes Security to keep your WordPress site free from spammers.
And also, you can set a limitation on your post comments that only previously approved commenters can comment on your posts. This is how you can stay ready against spammers and prevent your site from getting spammed.
Starting your WordPress journey as a beginner can be exciting and overwhelming. But by following these top 10 WordPress tips, you’ll avoid common pitfalls and build a website that’s secure, SEO-friendly, and user-focused.
Whether you’re launching a blog, an eCommerce store, or a business site, these beginner-friendly practices will set you up for long-term success.
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