WordPress is a content publishing platform ready made for bolt on functionality. The bolt-on functionality comes in the form of a plugin. If you’d like a calendar, there are plugins for that. If you want an email newsletter sign-up form, there are plugins for that, if you want to optimize your database – yes, plugins for that too. In fact, there are over 29,000 plugins available in the WordPress plugin repository. So many options it’s hard not to go wild and add a plugin for everything I want that’s missing with my theme, tools to help make my site more efficient, something that’s really cool, or …. But hold up there! Just because there plugins for everything doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to use them all. Restraint is a very good idea when it comes to plugins. Here’s why.
First off, for every plugin you activate on your website is another block of code WordPress will initiate and run. The more plugins, the longer it will take to deliver a page to screen.
Why? For every page request, WordPress has a set number of Actions that run during a page load, For several of these actions, WordPress offers a hook (think of these as check points during the process of building the page you see on screen). WordPress will check to see if any plugins need to be run at each point where a hook exists when responding to a page request. An example is get_header – a hook that is run at the very start of the get_header function call – the call that requests the header file to be included. The more plugins, the more code that needs to be processed before WordPress delivers the final page to the viewer.
Secondly, as with anything built by humans, some plugins are better than others. Poor code can chew up server or client resources.
And thirdly, some plugins don’t play well with others. An example would be any plugin that uses a jQuery library – like an image sliders. One plugin uses one version of jQuery while another loads a different version. If the versions aren’t compatible one will override the other.
But I NEED those plugins!
I’ve seen sites with dozens upon dozens of plugins and the owner swore they needed every last one of them. In one case, I cut the number of plugins down by half and doubled the site’s speed and improved reliability. If you really need all those plugins then it may be time to re-evaluate your theme selection or what you’re trying to accomplish and how you’re accomplishing it. A time to reflect on how you’re using WordPress. The client’s site I cleaned up had a caching plugin to help speed up the site. Caching plugins are nice but they’re often indicative of a bigger issue. In this case the real issue was he didn’t optimize his images. Using a caching plugin to resolve this was a quick solution but not the right one. Once I showed him how to optimize images, his site got a whole lot faster.
Keep your site lean and trim by only using the plugins you need. Keep them up to date. And remove the ones you don’t need. Don’t leave them deactivated – remove them! Your website will thank you.