Even if you are a beginner, doing your research and reading up on forums can help you to avoid costly and risky mistakes with regard to your WordPress hosting. Your hosting is the base that your websites need to run effectively.
We’ve put together some of the most commonly made WordPress hosting mistakes, as well as how you can get around them, to save you valuable time and minimize your risks.
Make Sure Your Hosting Platform Meets The Minimum Criteria
In order to run WordPress your host must meet the minimum criteria. It is also important that your host is reliable and that your website is up all the time. You need a MYSQL database (version 5.0 or higher) and your host should be running PHP 5.2.4 or greater. These are the minimum requirements.
If you want your websites to run faster, consider hosting them on a CDN, or content delivery network. This can improve your websites’ load time tremendously and add an extra layer to your security features.
It is more secure if your PHP applications run using your individual and unique account name, instead of the server default name. Be sure to request this from your host when you sign up.
Don’t Choose The Wrong WordPress Platform
It is common for beginners to get confused between free WordPress.com and self hosted WordPress. If you have got them confused, chances are that you have made a very big mistake. If you do not know the difference and which products you need for your specific situation, make a list of the pros and cons and start listing the differences before you take action.
Don’t Buy Or Sign Up For More Than You Need
If you want to run a self-hosted blog you only really need a domain and your hosting. But beware, because there are a lot of domain registrars out there selling products that people do not actually need, but buy because they think they do. If you are small or just starting out these can be quite confusing. To explain in more detail about some of the non-essentials, it is worth knowing that you do not need private registration because one day it could become nearly impossible to move your site away. It is also unnecessary to pay for five years of hosting upfront with one host, for exactly the same reason.
Not Having A WordPress Back Up
Most of the time you only realize you do not have a back up when you need to use it. It is advisable that you create automatic WordPress back ups. Whether you choose to use free or paid for services is up to you.
If that doesn’t convince you enough, consider exactly what you would do if your site was hacked. If you could not find and fix the bugs quickly enough, your only option would be to retrieve your back up.
Not Doing Your Updates Regularly
One of the biggest mistakes that you can make with your website is not doing the updates when you need to. Whether you clean forget about them or keep putting them off until it is too late, not doing your WordPress updates can be pretty catastrophic. If it results in a site’s vulnerability to malicious attacks, it is really easy for your site to be hacked. But also remember to do a back up of your sites before you update. Nine times out of ten there would be no problem, but it is that one time that something goes wrong, where you could lose irretrievable data, that you should be concerned about.
WordPress issues updates regularly to improve on security and to fix bugs. The open source nature of the way it works means that by committing to the WordPress platform, you are also committing to the responsibility of keeping your electronic data protected.
Choosing Themes From Questionable Sources
It is very common for sites to be inundated with malicious links when themes from bad sources are made use of. To get around this make sure you only use themes from WordPress.org or from one of their trusted providers.
Using Weak Passwords
Using weak passwords puts your sites at risk, from both human attackers and from spambots. A weak password is a lot easier to crack and a master password that is cracked can unlock all your websites and make them vulnerable to attack. Make sure you choose a password with a combination of numbers, letters and symbols, and be sure to update the passwords on a regular basis.