[This is part of the Common WordPress Mistakes series to help bloggers, churches, ministries and nonprofits avoid common mistakes when creating a new website using the WordPress CMS.]
Alright, let’s get this started!
I am hopeful that by going over these common WordPress mistakes, many WordPress rookies can avoid headaches down the road or those getting ready to build their first blog, ministry or church website will find this guide to be helpful as they shove-off into new waters.
As I mentioned, yesterday, comments from WordPress veterans would be a great help—so don’t think this is just for n00bs! Also, feel free to ask any questions, we’re here to help!
Common WordPress Mistakes
Alright, let’s ease into this…
1. Dot Org Versus Dot Com
You know we had to start with this one.
With the popularity of WordPress.com, the free blogging platform, many have heard of WordPress, but don’t understand the difference between it and WordPress.org. In a nutshell, here’s the difference:
- WordPress.com is hosted and maintained by Automattic with paid options that expand its customization options.
- WordPress.org is self hosted and maintained by you with unlimited options that exaands it customization options.
Before everyone gets all nitpicky with me, remember this is in a nutshell. To understand the differences further, read this chart.
This is the first thing you should understand before digging into WordPress. Because it is the first and foremost thing you learn about WordPress, this is often overlooked and assumed knowledge—and now you know (if you didn’t already).
2. Understand Website Hosting Pricing
I just talked with a church via email about their hosting package.
I was heartbroken.
In fact, this probably warrants a post of its own! This church had committed to a website hosting package that cost them over $500 per year and they were locked-in for more than a year! What makes this story incredibly sad, is it wasn’t spent on quality hosting, but useless add-ons that are designed to lure the experienced and knowledgeable.
This isn’t the only reason why you should understand website hosting. For example, here are three good web hosts:
Bluehost hosting starts at $4.95, Media Temple starts at $20, while WP Engine $29 per month.
What’s the difference?
You need to know!
Look for more, tomorrow.
Meanwhile, feel free to ask a question we could address or for the veterans out there—drop some knowledge, yo!
Salt Formation says
It amazes me what companies will charge people these days for hosting and actually give no more value.
Eric Dye says
And then there are those hosts that talk about value and it has to do with slick marketing and tools you don’t need or will ever use. Give me awesome hosting with hosting centric tools.
Matt R says
Our church uses Bluehost to host our WordPress driven website. I had no part in creating the page, but after a month on the job I feel like I have a pretty solid handle of the in’s and out’s of adding posts and updating our site!
But I don’t know what I don’t know, so keep this series on WordPress going!
Eric Dye says
Awesome! 😀
Dan Stephens says
I had the fortune / misfortune of paying $700 for the first year of hosting for my church’s website. My education up to that point was in Psychology, so I knew nothing of web design or hosting. The good thing is that our church actually had a descent looking website for the first time ever. The bad thing was that ridiculous hosting price (I didn’t know any better). Fortunately I found some good tech blogs and church marketing blogs, and therin learned about WordPress / Joomla / Drupal. We’re now on bluehost, and I used the headroom in the budget (which was determined by that first year of hosting), to buy a video camera and a year of Hootsuite Pro.
All of that to say, $700 for mediocre hosting is better than not having a website, and being able to put up an operable site. But one must do due diligence to learn and improve. If in a year you can’t make the move from the over-priced-but-better-than nothing solution to a self hosted CMS, you need to ask someone else to run the website for you.
I’ll spend the money on a premium them and premium SEO plugins next year (which, in hindsight, I should have done before the camera and Hootsuite, but live and learn…).
Eric Dye says
True story. Live and learn indeed!
Hopefully this series will help others avoid mistakes (as well as future installments).
David says
Hi Eric
There is no doubt that almost every blogger or webmaster do these WordPress mistakes once in their life.
& These mistakes help them to learn something new again and again with time.
You have listed here almost all the major WordPress mistakes which bloggers do including me.
I have also did so many mistakes in my WordPress blog. I can remember when I started my 1st blog, I never created any BackUp of my WordPress site. One day, by mistake I deleted the database of my blog from Cpanel and It created a major issue in my site.
I didn’t knew anything about it so I started my blog again by re-installing the WordPress.
That was the unforgettable mistake because It contained hard work of almost 2 months and I completely losed it by deleting the database.
After that day, I always take complete BackUp of my each site.
Thanks for covering such a nice article so that people can learn about these mistakes and also can avoid them. 😀
Brenda Smith says
I would must say that you just rocked in this article. 😀
It doesn’t matter, In which field you are working. You would definitely make mistakes and these mistakes will help you to learn something new. So we should never afraid of doing mistakes.
In this article, the WordPress mistakes which you have mentioned above are very much common which most of the bloggers or webmasters make when they start their 1st WordPress site.
When bloggers like me do mistakes then It is obvious that they can’t generate that result which they want because of that mistake. When It happens, they again start doing all the things and tries to find what they did wrong in previous turn and then they find their mistakes and learn from that mistake.
So some how, mistakes helped us to learn new things. Right? 😀
Most of the people think that doing mistakes will give them failures which they never want but they should understand that every successful person makes mistake at their initial stages and learn from them.
Every WordPress blogger did mistakes when they started using WordPress for the 1st time and same thing I did. When I started my very 1st blog then I didn’t knew that we can also create a BackUp of our WordPress site and I didn’t created any BackUp.
One day, by mistake I deleted the database of my site and completely ruined my few months of hard work. That mistake taught me that never leave any site without creating complete backup of your hard work.
After that day, I always create backup of my each WordPress site.
I would like to give a great Thanks to you for covering these amazing WordPress mistakes which people can use to learn from them. 😀