Mistakes in Web Design: 11 Sure Fire Ways to Break Your Site

January 12, 2024

I’ve seen clients mistakenly delete the very user that created all their pages. So…there were no pages left on the site. Not awesome.

Now, I’m not discouraging user cleanup; it’s essential. 

When an employee leaves, you should definitely remove them from the site to prevent any mishaps. The key is to attribute their content to another user so that it remains visible on the front end of your website.

2. Failing to check compatibility before updating

Most websites rely on plugins for extensions, and these plugins may not be updated as swiftly as the core software. This is particularly evident in platforms like WordPress. If you update the core software before the corresponding plugin is ready, it can wreak havoc on your site, causing parts or the entirety of it to malfunction.

2B. Not taking backups before updating (or ever)

Before you dive into the update party, always, and I mean always, grab a safety net – take backups. 

Picture this: someone shows up all stressed, saying they did something funky with their site, and we’re ready to swoop in and save the day. But, oh no, they’re not on our hosting, and there are zero backups. Cue the sad trombone. Without backups, we’re like superheroes without capes. 

There are two places to secure backups: directly on your hosting provider or by using a WordPress plugin to take a backup and download it to your computer. Both ways work. 

Just like with user management, updating plugins and software is critical. Software updates are the #1 way you can protect your site from hackers…Ignore those updates, and you’re practically inviting hackers for a wild party on your site. 

3. Deleting Your Homepage

It sounds logical that you wouldn’t want to delete the most visited page on your site but we have seen more than a few folks pull this one off.

Good news though: if you use WordPress, it doesn’t actually delete things with just one click. So you can hop into the track and reinstate your homepage.

You can also assign another page of your site to be your home page. If you use WordPress and you’re itching to change your homepage or the landing page for your URL, you can do it under Settings > Reading. 

But here’s the kicker: if you simply hit delete without reassigning, your website gets confused, and things stop working like they should, people will see a mysterious blank white screen when they check out your site. Not the best look. 

4. Letting your domain name expire

Whooo buddy this one’s a doozie.

We once had a client who let their domain name expire, and to their horror, a pornography site swooped in and redirected it to their own content. Not exactly the kind of attention a salon would want. 

The saga lasted over two years.

It’s pretty easy to avoid that fate though.

Domain registrars are pretty good about warning you. They flood your inbox with emails, like a million of them, reminding you that your domain is about to expire. Plus, there’s a grace period after the expiration date where you can still reclaim it. So, no need to stress, friends, you have a safety net.

Just don’t let it go past the grace period. It’s a bad move. Going beyond that point is like willingly handing your domain over to someone else because, once they snag it up, it’s game over. So, keep an eye on those renewal reminders and avoid the painful aftermath of a fully expired domain.

5. NEVER. UPDATING. ANYTHING.

While some folks plunge into updates without checking compatibility or taking backups, others take the opposite strategy – they never update anything. 

Now, we’ve already emphasized that neglecting updates makes your website a tempting target for hackers. But there’s another snag: browsers are constantly evolving. You’ve probably noticed this as your browser frequently nudges you to update.

Your website has to evolve WITH your browser. 

If you never update your website, browsers will eventually stop rendering it correctly (among other things). And things start to break and your site loads like a turtle. When you let things stagnate, issues are brewing without you even realizing it, especially if you’re not looking at your site on the regular. 

6. Choosing Crappy Hosting

Opting for poor hosting can spell disaster for a website. To begin with, it may result in slow loading times, which impacts your Google ranking and site conversions, and not to mention a crappy hosting situation can make site updates a real hassle. 

The biggest frustration? 

When their hosting goes down, these crappy companies don’t even tell you it’s down! To add to the frustration, they often don’t bother updating you when it’s back up. 

Sooo if it’s important that your site is up 24/7 just remember – you get what you pay for. Diligently pick a hosting provider and package that will actually provide that…not some penny hosting deal.

7. Moving all the files in your hosting space into different folders.

I had a client pull this classic move the other day – one of those quintessential organizers again. They dove into their hosting space, and spotted a bunch of files they felt looked ‘messy’, and decided to tidy up. 

Here’s the deal: your website is coded to locate specific items in specific places. 

Moving your files is like rearranging the toothpaste in your bathroom – you can never find it. The server doesn’t know to check the medicine cabinet. It’s clueless. So, it goes, “Boop! No toothpaste!,” and your site refuses to display anything. 

So their little organizing escapade ended up breaking their entire site. Lame, right?

8. Running a poorly executed find and replace

When we’re building websites, we often use a temporary domain with a string of numbers and letters to preview the site before it goes live. It’s super handy but when the site goes live every link and file reference has to be replaced with the final domain. 

So when it’s time to switch to the real domain take caution. If you goof up the placement of a period or misspell something, fixing it can be a real headache. 

To streamline this process, we us a plugin called Better Find and Replace. It reviews all the website files in the database, swapping the fake URL for the real one. Sounds magical, I know, however, a misstep here can lock you out of your site completely.

Use the dry run safety feature.

Before making the actual changes, you can use the dry run feature to preview what would happen. If it looks messy, best not to proceed. Test until it looks right!

SIDE NOTE: Once you’ve successfully run Better Find and Replace, don’t forget to delete the plugin. Hackers particularly love to use find and replace plugins.

9. Incorrectly redirecting pages

Best practice is to redirect URLS when you take a site live or delete a page. This allows you to send both users and search engines to a different URL than the one they initially requested. When the redirection isn’t spot on, instead of reaching the intended page, visitors end up on a 404 error page, not a great way to build trust.

Redirecting incorrectly can also wreak havoc by:

• Breaking links on pages
• Breaking links with UTM parameters from emails
• Inaccurate tracking in Google Analytics
• Rendering all pages inaccessible

So, careful planning and execution are key when making these changes as well as CHECKING the redirection to make sure it works after you make it…which leads me to the next mistake in web design to avoid…

10. Not checking your edits 

This is so easy and yet PEOPLE DON’T DO IT…check your freakin’ work.

Even with the best WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, your admin section won’t mirror the front of your site exactly. That’s normal. 

Click every link, test your email forms, and verify that notifications are coming through. Thoroughly inspect all aspects of your site to ensure everything is working seamlessly.

Save early and save often. 

Put that on a post-it. Heck, tattoo it on your hand. Whatever you need to remind you to check your freakin’ work.

If you’re making small changes, utilize the preview feature in WordPress to review your edits before publishing. If you’re making big changes just duplicate the page so you can publish and update to double-check your changes. Discovering something broken after making multiple revisions on a page, then finding the page is broken, can mean reverting and redoing all those changes.

11. Forgetting to uncheck do not index!!

I’m dating myself here…but…around 12 years ago, WordPress introduced a nifty little feature that allows developers to essentially tell Google to ignore a site until given the green light. And I, admittedly, didn’t know this fantastic feature was implemented by DEFAULT.

Regrettably, for a couple of months, we unintentionally left the box checked. Ya…the one that says “Discourage search engines from indexing this site.” Kinda significant.
(For future reference you’ll find it in General Settings > Reading.)

Fortunately we were monitoring our clients’ site traffic with Google Analytics and noticed the decline in traffic after a few months. And upon investigation discovered the culprit- the dreaded ‘do not index check box’!

So if your traffic is flatlining or you Google your company name and your Facebook and LinkedIn pages appear, but your website doesn’t, something needs your attention. And it may just be this little box. 

12. BONUS: Sure fire way to break your email – not taking your site live correctly.

Domain names can be likened to a roundabout with various streets branching off. One street leads to your website, another to your email, and potentially others to different destinations. Your email street is called the MX record.

If the MX record isn’t configured correctly, you risk losing email functionality when your website goes live. What sucks is you might not notice it right away. It can take up to 48 hours for changes to propagate across the internet. So during that period, as your domain name adjusts throughout the world you may get some emails at first and eventually it will trickle down to nothing. 

Aaaaand all those emails you lost – there’s no way to trace or retrieve them. 😱

So friend, if your email is attached to your company URL or you manage multiple domain names, especially when email is linked to a non-primary website domain, make sure you have someone who has a clue what’s up overseeing the launch to keep your email functioning in the good.

And that’s a wrap on story time. 

Hopefully with those tales of woe you now know something you didn’t know and dodge the bullet, avoiding these mistakes in web design entirely! If you need help troubleshooting just give us a shout!