[This is part of the Common WordPress Mistakes series to help bloggers, churches, ministries and nonprofits avoid common mistakes when creating a new website using the WordPress CMS.]
Today’s common WordPress mistake is one I’ve just recently gained a greater understanding of.
How many WordPress plugins should you be running? Is it just a numbers game?
Believe me when I tell you that I was shocked to hear about WordPress sites running 80 or 90 plugins! Does that mean anyone can do that? No, but if you understand what gives a plugin more weight than others, you can make more educated decisions when enabling them.
Common WordPress Mistakes
This common WordPress mistake is something that both beginners and veterans face:
Having Too Many Poorly Coded and Unnecessary Plugins Installed
You may have noticed how carefully this is worded. If you do a Google Search or even look around on ChurchMag, you’ll find plenty of blog posts and tips proclaiming the importance of reducing the number of plugins you’re using.
On a simple level, this theory holds water. Besides, there’s no reason why you should keep useless or unneeded plugins installed. There are security concerns, conflicts that could occur, not to mention the undue burden it may be having on your server—even if it is minimal. However, this is not failsafe nor concrete. Truth be known, you can run 80 or 90 plugins with less impact on a WordPress site running only 10.
Confused?
Stick with me.
WP Engine (ChurchMag’s stellar hosting service) shared a great blog post on this very issue, improving the understanding of WordPress plugin use. While telling those new to WordPress to run as few plugins as possible is a good idea, that’s not exactly the point:
“…the trick isn’t how many plugins you have, but what operations they need to perform in order to render your site in a visitor’s browser. Most plugins are pretty simple, but some will perform complex actions that are “expensive” in terms of backend processing, and will slow a website down.”
So this is partly a quality issue, but also a complexity issue.
According to Pippin Williamson, there are four major areas he looks for when he evaluates adding a plugin to his website.
1. Does it load lots of scripts, styles, or other assets?
2. Does it add extra database queries to each page?
3. Does it perform complex operations?
4. Does it perform remote requests, like to external APIs?
Depending on your skill level, you’re either nodding your head in agreement or your eyes are bugging out of your head while you quickly close this browser tab. If you’re the first one, be liberated from the myth of minimal plugins and re-evaluate what you’re using as it fits into these four questions.
As for those of you who may have already closed this tab, read it, know it, and refer to this in the recesses of your memory when you do understand what Pippin is talking about. In the meantime, know this:
- Quality matters
- Avoid all unnecessary plugins
- Use the P3 Profiler plugin to help pinpoint any naughty plugins
It’s funny. At the same time this WP Engine blog post came out, I was in the middle of a WordPress site/project that had more plugins than I have ever used before. I was a little worried about it at first, but after reading this article (and the fact that I am running the most premium plugins than any site I’ve built before) it makes sense why I haven’t seen a performance hit.
Questions? Comments?
John Wilkerson says
I ran this diagnostic on my site. 2 main culprits: Simple Lightbox and Jetpack really stood out. You would think Jetpack would load fast since it’s from WP.
Eric Dye says
Have you disabled the modules of Jetpack you’re not using?