 Good morning. How are you guys doing? Good. It's nice seeing new faces and old faces. So I'm looking healthier than last year. Okay, so today my talk is going to be on common mistakes when starting on a WordPress blog. Okay, so firstly what made me really talk on this, I realized there's a lot of people who say I've been doing WordPress blogs or doing WordPress websites but then when you go to the actual site you'll be wondering, when you are doing it for five years and then the simplest things that they should have taken care of on that site, they didn't. So I just picked on about 10 things and then I put the sources of where I got them and then you actually see more mistakes that people make when they're starting. So on the first one I'm talking about the platform, the platform we used. I'm all aware that there's WordPress.com and WordPress.org. We are. Okay, so usually when you're starting a platform, really the first question to be asking yourself whether it's a website or a blog is is it going to be something serious or I just want something online where people will read about it and all. So the difference then comes on how it is then going to be shown on your server. Firstly, like when you're using WordPress.org you get the chance to actually name your website depending on the domain you choose and you get full functionality on designing the website and everything. So I just gave an example there. First, let's say when you're using WordPress.org, that's when you'd find, let's say, a website written www.sysosignal.co.w And then for a WordPress.com, this is the commercialized version. So when you actually get there, you're given suggested names to use. And then that's when you find sites like maybe sysosignalowedpress.com or WordPress.sysosignal.org we've seen that. We've seen that. So usually when you're choosing what to use, if it's a platform, if you want to go business wise and even if it's a blog and you want it to go big, the first thing you should choose on a platform is a self-hosted site. Meaning you buy your own domain, you install WordPress there, and then you actually design your own thing without having to use the commercialized version. Okay. So I just then also did a screenshot. I'm not sure is it clear. This is, can you see? Okay. But this is WordPress.com. I think I opened this about two or three years ago. And I think I only posted about two things. And then the rest of this post were dependent on what I chose as my favorites or what I'm interested in. And then they come automatically. So if you look at the site, which is supposed to be the Edison site, all you can do is just add a blog post or a media in comments. That's all you get from the commercialized version. And then the design template everything is dependent on how the first one you choose when you're starting. And this then comes to when you're now actually using, let's say, your own bit domain, either on your local server or if you have it hosted, this was on them. But then you see when you install, you actually have actually more options on editing. I'm sure we're all aware of this. Okay. And then the second common mistake I then found out was especially on the issue of the WordPress installation. How many people, especially if you're newbies, have really had a hard time? Like for me personally I had a hard time. I remember if it was Nitro, I actually helped him this time asking how do I get my site not to have the WordPress name on it. And it's you'll be thinking it's something simple, but it's really not simple if you're newbie. So the WordPress installation usually for the sub directory, you can have, let's say if you do not, if you just have that zip folder and you install it directly, it results to those. Okay. Usually it results to R7 directory that's got the WordPress name on it. And then if you actually choose all the files inside the folder and you post them to your own folder written or named, let's say it's the site organization or whatever you want to call it. That's when you get the sub directory that then gives you the name specifically. So for example, this is just an example. If you notice like on the local host, I had like taffy coms that for you to gate that, it means you open a folder, let's say written taffy coms. And then you open a folder written gate. And then the gate one is where you put the WordPress files inside and then you put in taffy coms. That's when how you get the full personalized directory. If you don't do that it results to that WordPress. And you really don't want anyone searching your site and really seeing that it's WordPress, do you? So I just wrote the installing WordPress in a sub directory called WordPress the WordPress zip file places all core files in a folder entitled WordPress. Usually people make the mistake of uploading all folders instead of uploading the files contained in them. Anyone made that mistake before? And is there anyone who knew how to get that? And then it's really a common mistake. I actually googled how many people do this mistake and it has over a million. I think I have the screenshot there. And for the next mistake the basic security checks. The good thing is Charles has already talked about this. Basic security starts using the name. There's a difference between a person who's got their username admin and a user name user. Like admin is so obvious to everyone. And the password using admin admin and using the default password that will be given by then. I was actually in session how many people have actually made this mistake on WordPress and it's actually more than a thousand websites have had people using the default admin admin. And then the funny thing is those people actually go on the WordPress site and start complaining that my site was hacked. And when they asked really what really happened you get to the solution that the person used the default username default admin. And that's an important just basic security check. And then we've got the issue of payment links. How many know what payment links are? Okay. We've got an issue of payment link structures. I've seen websites where people just don't change the payment link structure. And you get let's say when you're going on page to page different pages you see this question mark and you don't understand why I clicked home. And instead of just saying home it's called question marks and all those funny signs. It all starts from the payment link structure. I think for WordPress the good thing is they really thought about this and they knew one way or the other things need to be personalized. The default payment link structure usually when you start WordPress is the plain one where you can get let's say PA123 question mark. And that doesn't make sense. So if you want your visitors there sometimes a person can go to home and they want to copy that link in some way. And then when they sent it to someone it won't make sense that you're saying go to your home page but it's written 123 question mark. For me personally I think using a custom structure or post name is really for blog post name and for custom structure you then personalize on how you want the payment link to look like. You can go post name only they'll be month, date, minute, second you can go as far as you want. And that will lead people more directly to know where they're going and to if they click a certain page they'll actually see the page there than having things scribbled and they don't know what it means. The default tagline most people also forget to remove this. Default tagline when you install WordPress, let's say on WordPress.org is just another WordPress site. And no matter what theme you put or anything if you don't change the tagline you have that, just another WordPress site. And the default tagline is one of the most mistakes made by beginners first of all and it carries a weight on your search. If a person Google's just another website, WordPress website your website will actually come as part of those results because it didn't remove the tagline. And now if you go to the next one it is actually used as a description for your visitors if you don't remove the tagline. If you go to that site and the description or if you Google that domain, the description it will actually write just another WordPress website and it will come, the other information will come after. And then we've got the sample content the sample content you use on your website sample content is that default page that's there when you install your website, WordPress website when you're starting. You should test that. You go to Hello World and you search and here I actually put a screenshot of how many people forget to do that. They put pages and everything but then if you search Hello World welcome to WordPress it actually has 10,400,000 results. And if you actually go down you would actually see people's actual websites not explanation what it means or anything but you see actual websites but because they did not remove that trash page they did not trash that Hello World page it actually comes as a result and if you want to post your SEO and all that it's good for you to trash the sample content. Too many plugins they can become more harm than good. I think that's a common mistake that's made by beginners when you install you realize okay this plugin can do this and you have got more than 20 or 30 plugins on your site but then actually what people don't realize is the plugins then actually slow down your sites they conflict some plugins don't work all together. You can't even say visual composer and another item because when you get to the page it actually conflict and to make your site even have more mistakes than it should. They increase the site vulnerability. It's like what Charles was saying if you have a certain plugin and it's got a lot of vulnerability imagine having 10 of them installed and they all have different vulnerabilities and different hackers are attacking you left, right and center. Memory and site lost in. I think that was supposed to be low. What happens is the more plugins you have the slower your site begins and this also affects like the optimization and also plugin management. The general management of a plugin if you've got five plugins you're capable of managing them faster and quicker than having let's say 40 plugins. You can't keep with all the updates and everything. And then another common mistake I wrote about in this PowerPoint the WordPress update. It is important for everyone to update. I've seen most people have sites and they don't update their sites and they would say okay maybe the new version is going to affect my site or my site is going to break. To be honest if you're using a theme in plugins that are well coded and either you bought them or you downloaded them on a faithful site or anything a WordPress update shouldn't break your site. Updates are meant to improve speed, efficiency and user interface. If not updated this can lead to a vulnerability in your site security. As long as your theme and plugins are coded correctly your site will not break. And then another common mistake is the issue of backups. Most people then concentrate on backups only after they've lost all their information. And that's when they start thinking okay how do I backup, how do I do that. But for every site you should generally always backup. There are a lot of plugins you can use for backups. I've listed some we've got upto a plus, duplicator, backup, body, footprints. And this can be done by choosing either you can do it with your source provider or you can just use plugin and always backup your site. Also on the issue of common mistakes we've got image optimization. Optimized images improve the overall performance of your site and they make your site actually load faster. So I just put a screenshot there indicating like let's say when you concentrate on the media settings you actually have how you can actually set image size, thumbnail size and everything even when you upload then you save those changes. Okay so I just put some references on the common sites and what I found online and I hope it might help someone especially the new peers. Thank you.