13 Tips every WordPress Beginners Need to know

Are you a WordPress Beginner? You have not concluded, yet but you want to create your first WordPress site or blog? In this article, I will discuss 13 tips every WordPress beginners need to know.

Do not take WordPress.com as WordPress.org

Most of the WordPress beginners don’t know the difference between a wordpress.com site and a wordpress.org site, but when you start, none of this is clear.

To tell the truth, I was also one of these victims a few years ago when I wanted to create my first WordPress blog. At the time, I knew nothing about the web and I saw that WordPress was the best, I typed “WordPress” in the search bar of Google and I created my account in WordPress.com of course!

Every WordPress Beginners need to know this advice when they want to create their first WordPress blog or site.

Of course, I do not go against WordPress.com but you should know that this solution is a piece of tail and that you may encounter some constraints or limitations.

Also Read: 10 WordPress Problems And Tips On How You Can Easily Avoid Them

Define the Structure of Your WordPress Site

This step could almost be the first step WordPress Beginners should take before creating their site, even before choosing a web host and a domain name.

Indeed, creating a site must be a thoughtful action:

1. what will my site serve?
2. who am I talking to?
3. what will my goals be?
4. what will my content be?

And at the same time, by asking these kinds of questions the architecture of your site will emerge.

With the help of a simple piece of paper, a flipchart or a text document, you have to decide on the structure: what will be the main pages, the about us pages, contact us page, Privacy page, etc

Also Read: 5 Unthinkable Ways To Attract More Readers To Your Blog

Choose your domain name

Now that you have defined the structure of your WordPress site, you will have to find a “good” domain name.

Often, this question does not arise since it is chosen according to the name of the company or owner name/surname but where it gets complicated, is when there is no availability of preferred domain name.

If you already have some ideas, you can check the availability of your future domain name on Namecheap website.

Pay attention to the domain extension, i.e the end of your domain name, it’s matters a lot which also affects how search engines will rank and understand your website. Mostly I recommend .COM domain extension because t fit in any category you want to build your site on. although the are other domain extensions like .NET, .EDU, .ORG, etc

 

Choosing a good web hosting

This is for me, a key choice to get started with WordPress.

I do not recommend choosing low-cost web hosts. Nothing worse to have problems later, your hosting site may shut down and you will have to make a migration, the result of buying will cost you twice as much and many hours of trouble …

So, choose a trusted and proven web hosting instead. I do recommend Namecheap hosting, which is a web hosting provider specializing in WordPress sites, with an easy and good interface.

Install WordPress on HTTPS

Depending on the web hosting you choose, it is possible that it offers you the installation of WordPress in 1 click.

Namecheap offers this option, however, some web hosts will install your site on a URL in HTTP: this is very annoying because you will have to migrate to HTTPS later. but Namecheap offers free HTTPS SSL certificate for the first year which makes it a great web host.

Be careful not to make the mistake of not installing HTTPS certificate on your web hosting or domain name.

Also Read: 11 Most Visited Blog Topics

Make the right settings

Once you have installed WordPress do not be quick to go choose a theme. Be sure to set the first settings of WordPress and including the permalinks that will be important for the rest of the adventure.

Create SEO Friendly Content

Now that you have set permalinks for your site, you will be able to start creating your content.

A web page is not a succession of photos and buttons to click. Think instead to create unique content while caring for your writing.

If you want your site to be well-positioned in the search results, rich content will allow you to place your keywords.

Do not forget to include your Title and Description tags with the Yoast plugin.

Also Read: What is SEO and how does SEO work?

• Choosing the right theme

I install my WordPress theme from the beginning, after making the settings of WordPress. However, if I have to create a site with another theme, be it a free or paid WordPress theme, I prefer to install it after creating my content because it allows me to have a little perspective on the visual. The main menu is already done, everything becomes easier to set the options of the theme.

In any case, I advise you to make the right choice of your site theme like Happythemes WordPress Theme from the beginning because it will avoid you to make a redesign later.

Above all, do no use complex WordPress theme on your site so that it won’t be too heavy on your server which will slow down the speed of your site. Buy theme that is SEO friendly, support mobile optimization, fast, ads placement, light theme, and graphics, etc

Also Read: VideoNow WordPress Video Theme For Video Blogging

Also Read: Ideas Mag Blogger Template – Free Download Premium

Securing your WordPress site

Moreover, some features of WordPress can be sources of hacking, like the login page for example. To protect your site to the maximum, you need to perform some actions such as:

• install the WPS Hide Login plugin or a similar plugin
• install an advanced security plugin like SecuPress or WordFence
• Limit login plugin
• perform updates regularly.

Pay attention to performance

If your WordPress site is slow, it may scare away users! For your site to be efficient, you will need to pay attention to many parameters, such as:

1. Choose a good web hosting: we have seen above, the choice of a good web host is crucial. This strongly affects the performance of your site.
2. Optimize your images for the web: images and photos must be compressed before uploading them to WordPress. After that, you can still optimize them with a plugin like Imagify.
3. Choose a good theme: some themes are so poorly coded that they can affect the performance of your site.
4. Unload scripts: they can slow the loading time of a site but you can improve this by unloading the scripts.
5. Cache plugin: without a doubt, a cache plugin like WP Rocket will definitely improve the speed of your site.
6. Clean the database: sometimes, slowness can also come from the database. Maybe it is overloaded with useless revisions, among others, that you can optimize too.

Note: It is the improvement of all these parameters which will optimize the performance of your site.

Do not forget about accessibility

Accessibility is often the last wheel of the coach and it is a shame! Everyone has the right to surf the web, even the visually impaired.

Also Read: 7 Top Ways to Increase Your Google Ranking Significantly

Use this list as a guild line to make your site more accessible:

• Remember to fill in the alternative text of your images,
• Subtitle your videos,
• Use colors visible to all with good degrees of tone,
• Choose readable fonts with the correct size, etc.

Create Social Network

What would a site be without social networks? Feel free to create specific social networking accounts to link them to your WordPress site.

Try to grow a community around your brand and choose the right social networks based on your niche and your target audience.

Update and Audit

As soon as your WordPress site is finished, you will be able to consider that this is only the beginning! Indeed, a website or blog never ends.

You will have to maintain it, perform regular updates and major updates. You can also improve some features, solve some bugs sometimes.

Also Read: SEO Tool to Check for Duplicate Content on a Website

Add new content, update some previous content.  In short, a WordPress site is a real adventure!

Wrapping up on Tips every WordPress Beginners Need to know

With these 13 tips every WordPress beginners need to know, we made a small tour of good practices and mistakes to avoid. Of course, nothing is to be followed literally, these are just tips!

To be honest, if I had been given these tips when I started with WordPress, it would have avoided me a lot of worries and troubles.