WordPress: 10 common errors + solutions

Whether you are an entrepreneur, a freelancer or a small business, here are the most common WordPress mistakes and, above all, how to avoid them.

1. Neglecting Updates (Themes, Plugins, and WordPress)

Fear of breaking everything or simply being lazy…, many users skip updates. Be careful, the bill can be high, especially when it comes to cybersecurity.

The solution:

✅ Test updates on a staging environment if possible

✅Delegate this task to a professional.

✅ Make regular backups

If you don’t have the time or expertise to manage the maintenance of your WordPress site, consider outsourcing this part. There are experts who specialize in WordPress site technical support who can ensure updates, security and continuous monitoring of your site. True tranquility!

2. Installing too many plugins (or unreliable plugins)

With over 60,000 plugins available, WordPress offers a huge number of features. The problem: Their quality varies greatly. Some are poorly coded and/or out of date. For example, it is quite common for a site to “break” following the installation of an extension.

Another very common concern: the impact on site performance. Adding too many plugins slows down your site and worsens the experience of your visitors. If your pages take too long to load, you can say goodbye to your potential customers.

The solution:

✅ Install only the truly necessary plugins (usually between 10 and 20)

✅ Choose well-rated plugins, updated regularly and compatible with your version of WordPress (check the comments in the WordPress plugin area.

✅ Eliminate what you don’t use.

Read also: Which site builder to install on WordPress?

3. Using an unoptimized theme

The theme is the visual and technical basis of your WordPress site. If it’s poorly coded, too cumbersome, or not updated regularly, it can become a real burden. A poorly optimized theme can slow down your page loading, create plugin conflicts, or make your site vulnerable to security breaches.

Attention, this is often the case with free themes or premium templates that are too “gimmicky”full of unnecessary features.

The solution:
✅ Choose a lightweight, well-coded theme, such as Astra or GeneratePress, known for their performance.
✅ Check that the theme is regularly updated and compatible with the latest version of WordPress.
✅ Avoid “gas systems” themes that offer 36 options you don’t need. A simple and quick theme is better, to be customized with reliable plugins.

4. Forgetting to install a cache plugin

A WordPress site without cache is a bit like a store that completely rearranges its shelves for each new customer… Result: pages that take longer to display, a higher load on the server and a poor user experience. Without a caching plugin, each visit triggers unnecessary server-side calculations, significantly slowing down your site.

The solution:
✅ Install a powerful caching plugin, such as:

• WP Rocket (paid, very complete and easy to set up)
• W3 Total Cache (free, powerful, but a bit technical)
• LiteSpeed ​​​​​​Cache (free and ultra efficient, especially if your host uses LiteSpeed ​​server)
• WP Fastest Cache (simple and effective to get started)

✅ Activate key functions:

• Page caching
• HTML/CSS/JS minification
• Cache preloading
• GZIP compression
• Lazy loading

5. Neglecting your site’s security

According to a Sucuri study, 95.5% of all computer infections detected in 2023 were on WordPress sites.

An unsecured WordPress site is an open door to hackers. And contrary to what you might believe, Small businesses and personal blogs are also targets. Brute force attacks, SQL injection, malware… the threats are real and can ruin your business in seconds.

And the consequences?
❌ Data loss
❌ Site inaccessible for days
❌ Google blacklist
❌ Damage to your professional image

The solution:

✅ Strengthen access

• Choose a strong password and change the default username to “admin”.
• Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) to secure the connection to your back office.

✅ Install a security plugin

Some reliable references:

• Wordfence Security: firewall, malware scanning, real-time protection
• iThemes Security: access blocking, security alerts, database hardening
• Safety Juices: monitoring, intrusion detection, cleaning in case of attack

✅ Make regular backups
In case of a hack, you can restore your site in just a few clicks. Plugins like UpdraftPlus or BlogVault let you automate all of this.
✅ Keep your site updated
Security vulnerabilities are often fixed via updates to WordPress, themes, and plugins. If you don’t apply them, your site remains vulnerable.

6. Incorrectly configuring permalinks

Default WordPress URLs (e.g. yoursite.com/?p=123) are difficult to read and poorly optimized for SEO.

👉 The solution: Go to Settings > Sticky Links and choose the “Post Name” format (yoursite.com/post-name). This improves SEO and the clarity of your links.

7. Don’t optimize your images

This is one of the most common mistakes… and one of the most penalizing. Images that are too heavy significantly slow down the loading of your pages, damage the user experience and undermine your natural referencing..

You often directly import high-resolution photos from your smartphone or an image bank, without resizing or compressing them. Result: Your home page weighs 5 MB and takes 10 seconds to display. Suffice it to say, your visitors and Google won’t be doing you any favors.

The solution :
✅ Resize your images before uploading – you don’t need to display a 4000px wide image in an 800px area.
✅ Compress them without losing quality with tools like TinyPNG, Squoosh or directly via plugins.
✅ Convert to WebP format, lighter than JPG or PNG. Plugins like Imagify, ShortPixel or Smush do this very well.
✅ Enable lazy loading to prevent all images from loading as soon as the page is opened (we’ll come back to this later in the article!).

Read also: The SEO guide for your images

8. Forgetting to take a regular backup of your site

It’s the mistake you only regret when everything has gone wrong. And often… it’s too late.

A plugin that breaks everything, a hack, bad management, an update that goes wrong: there are many reasons to lose your site. Without a recent backup, you risk losing weeks (or even years) of work, with little chance of recovering anything.

And no, the host doesn’t always back up your site for you, or not as often as needed.

The solution:
✅ Automate your backups with a dedicated plugin like UpdraftPlus: simple, effective, it allows you to send backups to Google Drive, Dropbox or other.
✅ Back up everything: database AND files (theme, media, plugins, etc.)

✅ Store your backups elsewhere than on the site server: a cloud space (Drive, Dropbox) or an external drive. If your site gets hacked, your local backups could also be compromised.

✅ Make a backup before any major changes: updating a plugin, changing the theme, adding new features, etc.

9. Leave content or demo pages unused

Many online sites maintain the “Sample Page” or “Hello world!” pages. visible, which gives an unprofessional image.

👉 The solution : Removes or replaces all default content, even if it’s not in the menu. Also clean unused drafts or test pages.

10. Not tracking your performance and SEO

Creating a WordPress site is good. But make sure it’s fast et visible on Google, it is essential. We often think that “everything is fine”… until we discover that our site is slow, poorly referenced or even penalized by Google without knowing it.

The solution:

✅ Monitor your site speed with tools like:

✅ Analyze your SEO with:

• Google Search Console (free and essential): to see how Google indexes your site, detect errors, monitor your keywords, etc.
• Excellent SEO OR Mathematics ranking : plugins that guide you in optimizing each page.

✅ Install a performance monitoring tool AS Google Analytics 4 OR Visible to understand visitor behavior (time spent on the site, pages viewed, bounce rate, etc.).