A quick search on YouTube for “how to fix WordPress” turns up almost nothing but videos promising a fix in under 10 minutes. The videos, which mostly come from general coding channels, are often very well produced.
Sometimes the videos are so confident that they feel like they must be right. But after implementing a fix on a WordPress site, it soon becomes clear that the video was actually very wrong.
It’s difficult to spot such videos before they cause problems. Many such videos are actually very useful, but in the wrong context.
Why General Coding Advice Breaks Inside WordPress Specifically
Note that WordPress is not just PHP or JavaScript code. It is an entire ecosystem of hooks and filters and more, interacted with by countless plugins. All of this sits on top of an update cycle for core that can change the behavior of code at a moment’s notice.
So, although general web development code may be correct in a sense, it can also be completely wrong when applied in a WordPress install, especially one that is live on the web.
By their nature, general coding channels can, and often do, build real and earned credibility when covering the normal range of programming topics. Then they write a WordPress tutorial.
The author of said tutorial may not even be a WordPress user, let alone a production site’s administrator. It’s the same vetting problem that comes up when choosing a WordPress development agency rather than a solo tutorial creator, credentials on paper don’t always match hands-on experience with a live site.
As already noted, lots of information on the Web is just plain wrong. It’s especially bad when the video that contains that wrong information looks really good. They’ll have nice lighting, and the video will be really well made.
That person is very confident and explains things very clearly. Someone just starting out with WordPress would have no idea that what they’re saying is completely wrong.
They might even lose some data because of it. As already noted, this can have very serious consequences. This is especially true for people trying to make a living from web design. Just because something looks good does not mean that it is good for the viewer. It is only when someone starts implementing what they are saying that they will find out that what they are saying is wrong. And by then, it could be too late.
The Confidence Problem
Once past the surface-level things (i.e., confidence on camera has nothing to do with accuracy when it comes to advice on the Internet), it becomes clear that the only thing that truly matters is view count.
On video-serving platforms, this translates into viewing time and click-through rates. It doesn’t matter if the counsel is excellent or terrible. What counts is whether it is viewed or not. And how that piece of advice affects the viewer is entirely secondary.
The channels chasing the most view counts have an inherent incentive to make the most dramatic claims about the causes of problems with WordPress sites. This is because, while accurate but less exciting advice on optimizing site speed settings will attract fewer clicks, it is in their best interest to make the most exciting claims to maximize watch time for their videos.
This does not necessarily have to do with the creators of these videos being bad people. As already mentioned, the main incentive for YouTube creators is having more and more people watch their videos. Thus, there is an ‘incentive-mismatch’ between video creators who aim to be as accurate as possible and those who market their videos.
This results in some of the most inaccurate videos also receiving the most views, and it’s not unique to WordPress content either. It’s worth knowing which top tech influencers to follow have earned a reputation for accuracy more broadly, since the same incentive problems show up across tech YouTube generally.
What Actually Signals a Credible WordPress Voice
A history of maintaining and working on real sites built with WordPress, not just creating tutorials of how to use WordPress. This is usually listed on a person’s site in the form of a portfolio, case studies, or even their work with clients.
Active involvement with WordPress.org’s plugin directory and WordPress core’s Trac repository (both publicly available). While creators could pretend to have contributed to these repositories, it would be detected eventually. A creator who actively participates in the WordPress community on these two platforms has a verified track record, regardless of the content they create on video.
They update their old videos from time to time to correct them (if they have become outdated due to changes in WordPress core or major plugins).
Many top WordPress developers are willing to say “it depends” in their tutorials and refuse to provide a one-size-fits-all solution. This is because every WordPress website is set up differently, and what works for one site will not work for another.
There’s no need to find and verify individual creators one by one. Instead, a curated list of credible tech and dev influencers, checked against the above signals rather than their subscriber numbers, does the work already.
Confident and Correct Look the Same on Camera
The confident coding expert and the correct coding expert both look good on TV, but only one of them can save a website from real damage.
Production quality and a clear explanation say nothing about whether a fix actually holds up on a live install, and the gap only becomes obvious after something breaks.
The standard indicators people rely on, such as polish, confidence, and subscriber count, do not accurately reflect whether the advice is safe to follow.