The 4 pitfalls of WordPress

You are building your own website. Thumbs up for you, you badass. There are a lot of website platforms to choose from. You heard that a lot of people use WordPress and you want to know if this is the platform you want to use. Let me give you the 4 pitfalls of WordPress to make your decision a little bit easier.

1. You need to know what you’re doing

To make a WordPress website work you need plugins. You need to know what plugins you have to use for what you want your website to do and keep it a safe website for you and your visitors. So, you have to have more knowledge about how a website works or you have to have the drive to find that out. Way more than when you build your website with for instance Squarespace.

2. Don’t get overwhelmed.

There are a lot of plugins to choose from. A lot of plugins you need are free with a paid upgrade but there are also plugins without a free version. Always check what people say about the plugin and if the plugin is compatible with your WordPress version. Be aware that there are plugins with malicious code which can compromise the security of your site. The same goes for Themes. So, be aware.

Another thing you need for your website: a Theme. Again you have so many to choose from. On the one hand, it’s absolutely great but it can also be overwhelming. Free themes don’t usually come with a builder so that makes it harder to create pages. You can, of course, use a plugin like Elementor as a solution for that. When you go with a paid theme just make sure that it’s the theme you want. You don’t want to find out that you spend money on a theme that can’t do what you want it to do. Also, choose a theme that looks good on every device.

3. Support is hard to find 

I found that support for plugins or themes is hard to find. First off, you have to go to the different plugins or your theme maker to get support. There isn’t just one place you can ask everything. Of course, there is the internet, but you and I both know that it can be hard to find good answers there.

Second, some plugins or themes don’t even offer support. So, maybe don’t choose them.

4. You are the backup

Like I wrote in pitfall 1, you need to know what you’re doing. That also means that you have to update plugins and make backups of your site. Because you don’t want your website to crash.

So if you laugh at all this go with WordPress. If you think I don’t want all this hassle, go with my favorite platform: Squarespace.