WordPress has gone beyond, “Just another WordPress Blog” – though this slogan is still very much a part of WordPress. The CMS – Content Management System has grown from a writer / hobbyist blogging software to full website building software. If you want to embrace inbound/ content marketing, which is the modern way of getting your brand out there, you don’t need me to tell you that your business website needs a blog section.
However, WordPress is much more than a blogging-software, but like most WordPress designers and advocates fail to point out, there are WordPress website problems you are likely to encounter building your business website on WordPress. Here, I’ll mention common problems and solutions to deal with them.
You’ll realise that most of these problems are simply proof that no single product is perfect. And if you look closely, you may discover why WordPress may or may not be the right website building tool for you.
1. Overwhelm of WordPress Plugin
If you decide to dive into WordPress without taking the time to learn from current users, you will be blown away by the torrent of plugins available. WordPress is such powerful software that with plugins built by its community of developers, you can make your website do almost anything you imagine. But this huge collection of plugin will cause more confusion for a newbie. Your business website wouldn’t need all the bells and whistles. You only need the right plugins that will help you achieve your website goals.
The solution: Take recommendation from those who know better. You will find this list of WordPress plugins for beginners very useful (I use almost all the plugins mentioned by the author plus more)
2. Dealing with spammers
Two kinds of spammers you’ll have to deal with are comment and user spammers. Comment spammer use malicious means to post irrelevant comments on your blog post, while user spammers create false user accounts on your blog (if you enable user registration).
The Solution: With Akismet WordPress plugin, you don’t have to worry about comment spammers. For user spammers, if you must enable user registration, use WP-reCAPTCHA plugin to validate registration.
3. Greater expectation – when you post you are expected to keep in touch
Because of the ease for visitors to leave comments on your blog, they expect you to be equal quick with your response. This means you have to give more time to your blog as it grows.
Solution: Apply your time management skill here and you’ll be fine
4. Dealing with Hackers
Quite frankly, any website on the internet is prone to hacking, so it’s really not a WordPress-only issue. Believe me, I understand how annoying and disappointing it can be to have your website hacked.
Solution A: There are several security plugins that will increase the security of your website to reasonable extent. See this external link for recommended WordPress security tips. This hack thing shouldn’t scare you because there is always a way around it. Implement recommended security tips, take a few not-complex security cautions and move on with your business.
Solution B: What if, after following every advice, your WordPress site gets hacked? From my experience, the best precaution is that you use a host company that is always there to help no matter the nature of problem you may encounter. I once mistakenly deleted one of my site’s content and all I had to do was contact my hosting company via Live chat and they personally restored the site without me doing a thing. Likewise, I didn’t have to do anything when my site was hacked; my host company took care of it. I consider the best solution from beginning is to use a hosting company that offers excellent customer service. I’ve been using Hostgator from day one to date. And I’ve never been disappointed.
Quickly: If you are considering joining a reliable hosting company, I strongly recommend Hostgator as a long time user – use this link and this coupon code – BLOGERIANCOM – to save $9.94 from the actual hosting cost.
5. Finding the right WordPress Theme
If you’ve ever tried to search for the right theme for your WordPress website, you already know how tedious a task it can get. You may spend days searching without finding the right theme that meets your exact preference.
Solution: If you can’t find a free theme that will service your purpose (often hard to achieve), you either search for a premium (paid) theme or hire a WordPress designer/developer to make your life easier.
6. Putting up with regular WordPress, theme and plugin updates
Because web technology is ever evolving, new and better ways of doing things are often discovered and implemented. WordPress is not any different. You need to update your WordPress core, theme and plugins from time to time, when there is a new version.
The good news is that, you can do this with a click of button and be done in 2 minutes or less. The pain comes when something breaks or malfunctions as a result of updating your site. On few occasions, I’ve had to downgrade WordPress or a plugin to revert to the old version, due to plugin and WordPress conflict. Whenever you encounter any problems after updating, the solution may just be a Google search away or you call for help.
7. Abuse of privilege to create unlimited content
This isn’t a typical problem but a lot of website owners get caught. Because WordPress make creating posts and pages unbelievably easy, you may feel compelled to post often without considering your primary focus.
Solution: Keep your business website focused to its purpose, whatever that may be.
There you have it – 7 problems and solutions of building your business website on WordPress. What did I miss? Do you encounter any of these WordPress problems? Do you consider them WordPress problems? I’ll love to read your comments and questions.
Subscribe to my channel
Hi Ikenna,
Excellent tips and plugin recommendations pointed out here. Nothing gets to me more than signing into my WordPress dashboard to find 100 pesky spammer comments. The Akismet plugin has to be among my favorites.
Hi Nichole,
Yeah, thanks to plugins like Akismet, else the wiles of these comment spammers is enough to damage the whole blogging experience.
Thanks for stopping by to comment. It’s nice to have you here.