Don’t Believe These Myths About WordPress

There is a number of blogging platforms that are popular at the moment. Some of them offer free hosting, some of them offer free domain, others charge for services like theme customization and customer service. Wix and Blogger offer free services for bloggers. Wix will charge you for customization but will provide help if you need it.

Contrary to the common belief, Worpress.org is not a platform that hosts blogs. WordPress.org is often confused with WordPress.com which offers hosting. WordPress.org is a software that will let you create your own website. There is a number of other common misconceptions that users should not believe.

WordPress is not easy to use

Probably the biggest myth about WordPress is that is hard to use. While other blogger platforms offer easy one or two-step sign up, downloading WordPress alone will not let you start publishing. The extra added steps in the process of developing a website prevent many from using WordPress. It seems complicated and users prefer to pay extra to avoid the hustle. The truth is that installing WordPress could be as easy as creating a blog anywhere else. What stops many is the time needed to learn about the installation process.

� The first step towards creating a website is to download the latest version of WordPress. Now you have the software.

� The second thing that you will have to do is to purchase hosting. Hosting is the service of providing you with a server that will host your website.

� The last thing you will need is a domain name. Many companies that provide hosting also sell domain names.

Once you have everything ready, you can start the installation. If you buy the hosting and the domain name from the same company, you don�t even have to think about connecting the domain name to your website � all this will automatically be done by the hosting provider. They will also help you with any installation issues that you might have. A five-minute YouTube tutorial will help you get your website running in no time.

WordPress is not secure

Any website is as secure as you make it. Some people never think about all the security issues that might occur when using a weak password. Security guidelines exist for every website owner, and that includes WordPress.

Don�t use a short password. Never use your name or the name of your website as a password. It is advisable to use a password that is at least eight digits long and contain capital and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols.

WordPress actually makes it easy for you to secure your website by providing you with a lot of options for security plugins. Securi Security, Wordfence, and iThemes are the most popular choice for the users of WordPress.

Another thing that can undermine the security of your website is using outdated plugins and themes. Every plugin and theme should be regularly updated in order to be secure. If you notice that a plugin hasn�t been updated for a long time, check the developer�s website and see if they are still supporting that plugin. If they are not, consider switching to another.

WordPress is used only for blogging

As we have already pointed out, WordPress is the software that helps build websites. This software, it is not only used by bloggers. The convenience that WordPress provides makes it a popular choice for a lot of different websites. Bloggers are only a smart portion of their users. Big news companies, tech review websites, websites in the music industry, and many others have adopted the WordPress as a website building software. The most popular names are:

� Microsoft News Center

� Usain Bolt

� The Walt Disney Company

� The New York Times Company

� The Rolling Stones

� The Mozilla Blog

� Vogue India

� TechCrunch

� The Official Star Wars Blog

WordPress is slow

As with any website, there are a lot of factors to consider when trying speeding uploading time. WordPress, as the software, affects very little the loading speed of a website.� There are, however, WordPress-related elements that may slow down the loading of your site.

The first thing that slows down a WordPress website is the theme that you are using. It is highly recommended that you don�t use free themes. Those themes are very often built by beginner developers and might have issues that a professionally-designed theme is not going to have. Such an issue might slow loading speed caused by the framework that the developers have used or the functions that he has implemented in the code.

Another thing that may slow down a WordPress website is the use of too many plugins. Some users do not realize that every plugin adds to the loading speed and if too many active plugins are trying to load, this will significantly slow down the loading time.

Consider deactivating and removing plug-ins that are not being used at the moment. If you think that you will need them one day, you can always download them and install them again.