Mistakes People Make When Trying To Over-Customize WordPress Sites
In life, there is always the risk of doing too much. You can easily drink too much or eat too much. The exact same thing happens when you run a WordPress website. It is so easy to end up doing change after change, trying to make the site better, only to end up with problems that you may not even be aware of.
While there are various over-customization steps that can be taken, we will only stay focused on those that are really common. This will help you to avoid most of the problems that can appear for most people.
Adding Too Many Plugins
There is no way to deny the fact that WordPress gives you access to so many plugins that you can use in order to customize almost every single inch of the site. The problem is that many would end up adding too many plugins.
One thing that many do not understand is that when you add too many plugins, you may end up with conflicts. At the same time, even if you choose the most suitable web hosting package, you may still end up with a slow loading website. Only use the plugins that you actually need.
Forgetting About Browsers And Operating Systems
There are so many tutorials on the internet that teach you how to select the appropriate fonts for your website. With this in mind, it is surprising to notice that people do not read them and actually choose those fonts that they like, without checking compatibility with computers. You need to test all the fonts that you would add and the same thing happens to all modifications you may make.
Do not assume that if you modify something that is technical you would have a website that would work properly on all operating systems and browsers. This would be a mistake.
Over-Customizing SEO Plugins
You most likely know how important SEO plugins are for your website. However, people use them without even reading tutorials about search engine optimization. It is very important that you modify settings in the plugins only when you actually know what you are doing. If you do not, it is better to leave all settings automatic.
As a very simple example, many are tempted to add a lot of tags to their posts. This is a bad idea in the event that the no-follow attribute is not activated for the SEO plugin since the site ends up with many duplicate content pages. The problem is that some webmasters activate the no-follow attribute for the tags even when this is not necessary. This means a loss in the automatic WordPress tag based SEO advantage.
Not Taking Mobile Browsing Into Account
According to BlogForWeb, this is something that can drastically hurt your online business as mobile browsing is growing at a huge rate. When you make changes to your WordPress site, you have to keep responsiveness in mind. If you modify anything and the experience of the mobile browser is negatively affected, it is a really bad idea.
On the whole, it is very important that you keep testing after every single WordPress modification you make, even if it seems minor. You never actually know if it would hurt your site and the only way in which you can be sure that it does not hurt the site is when you test it.
I am using WordPress as a main tool to build my sites. With all available plugins and themes it makes creating websites fun and very creative experience.