6 Areas in which some WordPress website owners often let

themselves down – part 1

It is easy to drop the ball so to speak when running a self-hosted WordPress website.

This articles covers six different areas self-hosted WordPress website owners often let themselves down.

This is part one of the article which is spread out over two blog posts.

If you require website support, please consider Neogain.

Area 1 – Comment Moderation and Responding

When someone leaves a thoughtful comment it is rewarding to the blog post writer, plus often enriches the content.

Other times people are leaving comments purely to spam. Moderating comments, especially on larger websites can be pain.

Regardless if you allow comments it should be moderated with the help of plugins or services.

If you allow spam comments to be left ad-hoc on your blog, you probably will put off those who were considering leaving a serious reply.

Also if you fail to respond to comments within a short period of time, again it will put people off and possibly lose you subscribers.

To take the pain out of comment moderation, you should assess three areas:

1. Settings for new comments.

2. Services helping you moderate comments.

3. Plugins helping you moderate comments.

Note: If you are looking for alternative to akismet, you might want to consider using the Spam Free WordPress plugin.

Area 2 – Website load times and theme design

Often you will see people picking a ready made theme, but giving no consideration to the impact the theme will have on their website.

Does the theme need optimising to load quicker?

Is the header too large?

Can you see a decent dollop of content without scrolling?

Are the fonts too large?

Is it cross browser tested? Do the colours need changing?

There is definitely a place for using themes that have not been specifically designed for you, as well as buying a theme designed just for you.

In many cases it won’t take a skilled WordPress designer long to tailor an ‘off the shelve’ theme just for you, but you need to make sure the original theme has the makings of being right for you website before buying.

Plus you should optimise all your theme images to load faster and make sure your colour scheme doesn’t detract from your content.

Area 3 – Posting schedule

It isn’t unusual for you to find businesses don’t feel they have a news item per month to share.

Plus often people find themselves too busy to update their websites.

A regular posting schedule be it news, blog posts and pages not only will help you keep clients updates and engage them, but also will help you scale up your website, which is an asset after all.

If you find you have little time for writing, then try and write a few posts back to back, then schedule them each week.

That way throughout a month your blog will be regularly updated.

Plus you can always hire Neogain to write your website content!

To be continued…

In part two of our article, we will continue to cover areas in which some WordPress website owners let themselves down, plus provide more useful WordPress tips.

If you require WordPress support,

please get in touch.