11 Costly Drupal Mistakes

Cross-posted with permission from OHO Interactive

If you're not careful when it comes to implementing your Drupal site, a lot can go wrong. Working with a partner who has Drupal expertise and plenty of experience can help you avoid costly mistakes that can derail your digital strategy. Here's our list of 11 common mistakes that are entirely avoidable, along with the reaction you can expect if you make them.

1. Picking the wrong host. If you picked a host who can't handle spikes in your site traffic, you're just asking for site downtime.

2. Not enabling page and block caching. If you haven't done this, you're not optimizing for performance and speed.

3. Not enabling server side caching. Expect slower site performance if you skip this.

4. Forgetting to aggregate CSS and Javascript files. If you miss this, your site will load slowly.

5. Hacking Drupal core files or themes. To get exactly what you want, use Drupal functions to override and create subthemes when necessary.

6. Neglecting to implement a backup plan. Whether you have automated backups or do it manually, not regularly backing up your site puts you at risk for losing the whole thing.

7. Waiting to outline your content strategy. Not understanding your requirements before you start building your CMS is a surefire way to end up with missing or misconfigured content types.

8. Using modules that are not supported or actively maintained. When you're selecting modules, be discerning or you could end up with a broken site or one that is vulnerable to security problems.

9. Ignoring site security. If you haven't implemented a spam blocking solution like Captcha or Mollom on your site, expect to spend a lot of time cleaning up spam coming in from every open form on your site.

10. Overlooking blog comment services. If your blog includes an open comments section and you aren't using a third-party service like Disqus, you're opening the spam floodgates.

11. Stopping at the standard SEO. While Drupal's built in SEO benefits are good, not leveraging other tools out there to get you the best rankings possible is a big miss. Amp up your site's SEO by using Google Webmaster Tools to submit an XML sitemap and understand how your optimization efforts are paying off.