(Randy Schrum) To help your efforts at keeping a well-run blog, here are 8 common WordPress mistakes explained so you can avoid them and ensure that your site runs faster and is more secure.

1) Keeping ‘admin’ an administrator. WordPress automatically creates the ‘admin’ username and gives it administrator privileges. Combine this with a poor password and you have a recipe for being hacked.

2) Posting content through the administrator. Instead, create a contributor account and post all content through the contributor. You can still create content as the administrator and choose to post as the contributor.

3) Keeping ‘wp_’ as the table prefix. If you don’t change the table prefix, it is easy to hack your site using the default settings. An easy one-time change will protect your site — choose a prefix that will be difficult to guess.

4) Not replacing salts and keys. Salts and keys are used to authenticate users and their log-ins. WordPress will generate the phrases for you; just copy and paste what is at this link and you’ll fend off hackers.

5) Not backing up your site. The tips above will help protect your site from hackers, but no system is crack-proof. Bluehost, VaultPress, and BackWPup all offer backup options for your site — VaultPress is not free but comes highly recommended by WordPress users.

6) More categories than tags. Organising your site affects your SEO and site load times, so it is important to think about your categories and tags. As much as possible, limit your categories and use tags to bring it all together.

7) Forgetting the cache. Once a visitor has viewed your website, their computer keeps a cache to make it easy and quick to return to the site. WP Engine offers built-in caching and makes it easy on you, the site host.

8) Ignoring WordPress updates. Being busy, it is easy to brush off the latest update and think everything will be fine. Well, the updates are designed to make WordPress run better, so it is worth the time (and it doesn’t actually take long at all) to install the update as soon as it comes out.