These are things I found out the hard way. Hopefully at least one of them saves you some time or frustration.

1. Always have a staging environment

Before you make any significant change to a live site — a major plugin update, a theme change, a PHP version upgrade — test it somewhere else first. Most hosts offer a one-click staging environment. Use it. Restoring from backup after a bad update is far more stressful than five minutes of testing.

2. Redirect chains kill performance and SEO

A redirect chain is when page A redirects to B which redirects to C. Each hop adds latency and dilutes link equity. Check for chains with Redirect Checker and fix them so A goes directly to C.

3. Use WebP for images

WebP images are typically 25–35% smaller than JPEG at the same visual quality. All modern browsers support WebP. Use Squoosh to convert images before uploading. Your page load times will thank you.

4. Set your timezone correctly in WordPress

Go to Settings → General and set the timezone to your local timezone rather than UTC. This affects when scheduled posts publish, what timestamps appear in comments, and what your analytics reports show. Easy to overlook, annoying to fix retrospectively.

5. The browser cache is not your friend during development

When something isn't working the way you expect, the problem is often that your browser is serving a cached version. Hard-reload with Ctrl+Shift+R (Windows/Linux) or Cmd+Shift+R (Mac). Or open DevTools, right-click the reload button and choose Empty Cache and Hard Reload.

6. Read the error logs

When something breaks, the error log is the first place to look — not Google. In cPanel it's under Metrics → Errors. For Apache directly: /var/log/apache2/error.log. The log usually tells you exactly what went wrong, including the file and line number.

7. Don't install plugins you don't need

Every plugin is a potential attack surface, a source of conflicts, and a performance overhead. Before installing anything, ask whether you actually need it. A lot of things people install plugins for can be done with a few lines of code in functions.php.

8. Canonical tags matter more than you think

If your site is accessible at both https://yourdomain.com and https://www.yourdomain.com, search engines may treat them as separate sites and split your link equity. Set a canonical URL in your SEO plugin and make sure all internal links use the same format consistently.

9. Google doesn't index pages instantly

After you publish something, it typically takes days to weeks to appear in search results. Submitting the URL through Google Search Console speeds this up a little, but there is no way to force immediate indexing. Plan your content calendar accordingly.

10. Document your setup

Write down your hosting provider, nameservers, PHP version, WordPress version, which plugins you have installed and why, and any custom code you have added. Future-you (or whoever takes over the site) will be enormously grateful. A simple text file in a private folder is enough.