10 Signs You Need Help With WordPress

Your basic WordPress settings have a significant impact on your website. If you are unsure how changing a setting will affect your site, do not change it before you do. Most settings are pretty self-explanatory, but some settings can cause problems if you are not careful, i.e., changing your 'permalink settings' on an established website could break all your internal and external links.

The best thing about WordPress is easily installing plugins to expand your website's functionality or design. This can also be a source of aggregation when managing your WordPress site. The first troubleshooting step for almost any WordPress problem is to "disable every plugin and re-activate one by one to find the plugin causing your "conflict." Although 'plugins' make great shortcuts, our philosophy is first to achieve the functionality or design without a plugin. And if you do need to install a plugin, be sure to perform due diligence on any WordPress plugin before installing it on your website.

Themes like Plugins are created by independent developers or companies. The only 'official' themes are the ones that come "out of the box" with a WordPress install. Proper due diligence should be done when choosing a theme as well. There are thousands of free and paid WordPress themes. Find one that is well documented and frequently updated. Some themes come 'packed' with a bunch of plugins and files that can be used to spin up a demo site but may not have much value to your business. Also, a theme with a lot of 'bloat' can severely slow down your website.

Widgets provide a convenient means of adding content and features to a website and require no coding experience. You can add content and features to certain areas of your WordPress website. The most common widget area is the blog sidebar. Your active theme will determine placement, and some plugins have extended widget options.

Navigating your admin dashboard can be cumbersome and intimidating. However, there is no harm in exploring the menu options to learn where the options and settings for your WordPress website are. The more plugins you have installed, the more items you will have in your dashboard. 

Responsive websites have been an essential factor for user experience. Having your website display as expected on any device is imperative. Many themes will have responsive 'break points' and depending on your content the predetermined pixel width may not display your content in a desirable way.

Incorporating even a minor change in functionality can have a ripple effect across your entire site if you are not careful. Adding 'Woo-commerce' to add e-commerce functionality to your WordPress site or adding a booking plugin could make a significant impact on your online business; having some professional backup when making these updates will ensure it's done correctly. 

Any significant redesign changes should never be done on a live site. Having a proper staging environment for your WordPress site will prevent a lot of headaches and take the pressure off when the redesign process isn't going exactly how you intended. If you are migrating hosts for any reason, you will need some help. We recommend paying close attention to any page errors for at least a month after many changes. Any indexing errors from a redesign or a migration can be monitored in the Google Search console. 

Seeing errors on the front or backend of your website, are you getting the 'white screen of death when your website loads? Or perhaps the problem is a little more subtle, like an image or text box displaying incorrectly. Sometimes these issues are simple fixes but can still take significant time to solve. Getting help from a WordPress professional will drastically reduce the amount of time spent troubleshooting your website problems.

If you decide you need the flexibility that comes with Woo-commerce (the e-commerce extension for WordPress) or if you have outgrown your Shopify or Wix website for any reason, you may want to get a professional in WordPress to help you make the switch. However, you should be able to download your Shopify info and import it into Woo-commerce easily. It would be good to have professional assistance to ensure you don't lose any data and the migration goes smoothly, avoiding any other pitfalls lurking in the shadows. Be sure to reconnect all your offsite business assets as well like Google analytics.