Have you ever encountered any WordPress post-launch issues?
Launching a new WordPress website is thrilling, satisfying, and, to be honest, a little stressful, even with a simple website pre-launch checklist. But the job isn’t done yet.
Even if you have an excellent quality control procedure in place, a few flaws are impossible to spot before releasing a new website. The following are the five most common WordPress post-launch issues that arise on WordPress sites after they go live, as well as recommendations on how to swiftly resolve them.
1. Spam Submissions on Contact Forms
It’s tough to know what amount of spam prevention is required before launching a website. Spam – whether undesired or outright destructive – is one of the most pervasive WordPress post-launch issues on the internet these days that it’s difficult to avoid entirely, and it’s extremely normal for a website owner to be flooded with spam form submissions immediately after debut.
Honeypots and captchas are two prominent methods for combating spot bots. Honeypots are a means of adding a field to a form hidden from users but filled up by bots. Several popular form plugins for WordPress sites, such as Gravity Forms and Contact Form 7, provide straightforward instructions for enabling honeypots and help you prevent WordPress post-launch issues.
Another alternative is to include a captcha in a form that needs the user to solve a little problem to show they are not a robot. Captcha choices have developed over time, and Google Recaptcha now includes an invisible captcha with a variety of settings. To limit a high amount of entries, certain websites may require honeypots and a captcha (luckily, there are a variety of anti-spam plugins available).
2. Slow Performance Due to Hosting Configuration
Since mobile page speed became a Google ranking criterion in 2018, every WordPress site has prioritised performance. Poor page load speeds and downtime can have far-reaching consequences for a new website, but there are various actions you can take to limit any possible harm.
Begin by doing basic speed and performance tests on a production server while redesigning a website. These preliminary testing can help alleviate any future concerns, but post-launch tests will provide the most reliable findings, especially for high-traffic websites.
If you notice sluggish page load times, first check the hosting setup. Is the website hosted on a shared server with restricted resources? Is the server capable of handling the level of traffic?
Because most online designers and developers adhere to image optimisation standards, picture optimisation is unlikely to be a top performance culprit on a new site.
The server response time is often broken down in most performance testing, and this measure may assist you in determining whether you need to alter hosting arrangements or services. In addition to performance, for the first 30 days following launch, you may wish to test an uptime monitoring system.
3. Indexing Errors with Google Search Console
Indexing issues are common WordPress post-launch issues with new websites, particularly those with significant changes to the URL structure and frequent redirects. Google Search Console is an excellent tool for detecting indexing WordPress post-launch issues.
Examine the Index Coverage Report in Google Search Console and search for any WordPress post-launch issues in the troubleshooting section. Following is a list of some of the most typical error messages that may appear after launching a new website:
- Pages Are Blocked by robots.txt
- Page marked no index
- The page has a crawl issue
- The submitted URL is soft 404
- The submitted URL is 404
Always double-check that the general reading setting in the WordPress site for “discourage search engines from indexing this site” has been unchecked after launch if there are any difficulties connected to a robots.txt or no index setting. For a new website, this might be a simple but major error.
For individual page URLs identified as no index, you must check the website settings and determine whether certain pages should stay no index or be altered. A crawl problem in the Index Coverage Report might be more difficult to rectify. The URL inspection tool in Google Search Console is the best approach to get more information about what is causing the problem.
If any 404 problems are discovered, they must be addressed as quickly as possible. Having a high number of 404 errors might harm an established website’s rating. In addition to these usual problem signals, Google Search Console may show other data such as mobility faults and performance evaluations, which can be useful for post-launch evaluation.
4. Incorrect Featured Image for Social Sharing
Launching a new website is a fantastic marketing opportunity, and you’ll undoubtedly want to share the stunning new site on social media and other marketing platforms.
Check the featured picture on the home page before you or anybody else clicks the share button. Share the website URL on a social networking platform to see what featured picture and text appears for the URL.
If you haven’t gone over your social sharing settings, it’s fairly usual for a network like Facebook to take a random image from the home page, turning your exciting post into a dismal preview of the new website.
There are various options for modifying these parameters and WordPress post-launch issues. Facebook and other companies use the Open Graph protocol. To examine the current information that the platform is using when the home page URL is provided, utilise the Facebook open graph debugging tool. You may use the debugging tool to erase the Facebook cache for the URL after modifying the open graph protocol on your home page.
Yoast SEO is another useful tool for configuring social sharing settings and addressing WordPress post-launch issues. The free plugin features a Facebook and Twitter social networking area. Because these are two of the most popular social media networks, adjusting the settings for these platforms will frequently guarantee that the website appears fantastic when shared with others. Alternatively, you may utilise these guidelines to generate shareable photographs for social media (manually or with the help of a plugin).
5. Missing or Incorrect Tracking Codes
To collect data on your website, most analytics services and advertising campaigns rely on tracking tags. When rebuilding an existing website, you may not know or recall that these tracking codes were already set up and may neglect to transfer them to the new website.
To coincide with the introduction of the new site, you may run multiple marketing initiatives. Having erroneous tracking codes or neglecting to add them can lead to a variety of problems, including a significant loss in data gathering just when you need it the most.
If you use Google Tag Manager to manage all of your trackings, you’ll frequently have the Google Tag code on the site as well as all of the other tracking codes within the tag manager. However, if the principal Google Tag Manager code on the new website is missing, data loss across many tracking systems might be lost.
Examine any analytics or monitoring tools, such as Google Analytics, immediately after launch and again 30 days later as a post-launch checklist item. Examine the data for abnormalities and drops. Because most tracking codes are placed to the website’s header, you may also check the header codes for any existing or missing codes to avoid such WordPress post-launch issues.
Wrapping It Up
That’s it: 5 post-launch quality control procedures to assist you to avoid as many WordPress post-launch issues as possible.
After all, creating a website is a great accomplishment, and you’d undoubtedly like to enjoy smooth sailing rather than fret with needless WordPress post-launch issues.
Have you encountered any additional WordPress post-launch issues while creating your website? Or do you have any more post-launch advice to share? Please share your thoughts and WordPress post-launch issues in the comments area.
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