The more HTTP requests you have, the more time it takes to complete and that translates into a slower loading time for your site. You get too tired and sluggish to problem solve. Speaking of HTTP requests, too many database queries is another potential problem plugins can bring. Much of your WordPress site is stored in your database.
Every time your page needs to load and it requests information from your database, it takes time and resources. Similar to HTTP requests, the more queries that are sent to your database, the larger the strain is on your database and the overall performance of your site suffers.
This is particularly an issue because this causes your database to run inefficiently, which leads to a super sluggish site. Activated plugins are especially a problem, but deactivated plugins still store data in your database and cause bloat. Even plugins you deleted can still store stray data. The more plugins you install, the higher your chances become of running into a compatibility issue.
The more plugins you have installed, the higher the risk is of one of those plugins having a security hole that a hacker could exploit to infiltrate and infect your site. Plugins are no exception. No matter how skilled of a developer you are, statistically speaking, the chances of being able to write perfect code with no bugs is zero probability. Every plugin is going to have its fair share of bugs, but there are also many plugins out there that are incredibly poorly coded.
These plugins wreak havoc on your site in often multiple ways as mentioned above. Now to answer the all important question, how many plugins is too many? How many WordPress plugins do you have installed on your site? How fast does your site load? Do you have any tips that I missed? Share your experience in the comments below. A copywriter, copy editor, web developer, consultant, course instructor and founder of WP Pros e , Jenni McKinnon has spent the past 15 years developing websites and almost as long for WordPress.
A self-described WordPress nerd, she enjoys watching The Simpsons and names her test sites after references from the show. I think these recommendations spoiled an otherwise decent article. As such, giving a numeric answer makes no sense, even as a general answer.
The number of plugins really doesn't matter - which, to be fair, you do say. Terrible advice. Multifunctional plugins are the devils spawn. Good plugins are simple, they do one thing only and have minimal configuration. Multifunctional plugins are bloated and cause plugin conflicts.
Pete: Making generality is not reasonable. There are a ton of multifunctional plugins which works perfectly. Jetpack is one of them, you can have 1 plugin instead of a dozen. And without talking about the number of plugins, I personally prefer to have Jetpack than 15 plugins because it will be easer to maintain.
I won't need to update 15 plugins each time. Completely agree with David. Not all plugins are equal and you simply cannot say what a "good" number of plugins is. In my experience, people want a number and they get a bit irritated if you don't give them even a general number.
The numbers given in the article are pretty reasonable given that it's generally about the amount of plugins that would fit well with those kinds of hosting. The bigger the slice of poorly-coded you have installed, the higher your chances to experience at least one of the following issues:. One of the key aspects when talking about WordPress plugins is that website owners tend to ignore the importance of putting some resources into improving the quality and efficiency of the plugins they install.
Francesco elaborates:. If we bring in more poorly-coded plugins, or even plugins that are too big for our needs, the maintenance costs will increase over time. WordPress is an ever-evolving platform, and your website needs to keep up with its pace in this ever-evolving development strategy. The more plugins you bring in to your website, the more expensive it will become to maintain it properly, to keep its performances high, and to keep it secure.
This blog post features Francesco Carlucci , a technology expert and software developer helping companies to reach their goals since He specializes in enterprise-level WordPress development, custom integrations, e-commerce, and performance-oriented solutions.
When he is not writing code, you can probably find him writing blog posts for internet entrepreneurs. The Codeable Editorial Team consists of WordPress experts and professionals with years of experience building, managing, and growing WordPress-powered websites. We use cookies to make our site work and for analytics and content optimization purposes.
By using it you agree to the use of cookies for these purposes. See our privacy and cookie policy for details. I warned you about that… So why focusing on the total number of your installed plugins has 0 value for your business?
Especially, you should know that: not all WordPress plugins are greatly-coded not all WordPress plugins follow best practices not all WordPress plugins require the same amount of resources not all WordPress plugins have the same impact on your database not all WordPress plugins do the same number of HTTP requests Each plugin is different from the other in several ways.
So the question now is: how can you find high-quality WordPress plugins? How to be sure you install only high-quality WordPress plugins on your website A plugin is only as good as the code behind it. Francesco explains further: All plugins need to be updated. Glad you found the guide helpful. Glad our guide was helpful. I have started experiening some issues with my site, for example a page will not load when all my plug-ins are loaded. Any advise?
Unless the security plugins say they work together, we would only recommend one to prevent conflicts. Thanks for all the awesome information you guys post! I have just learnt WordPress this year and found it so overwhelming initially. Your articles are so well written and easy to understand and I have just created my first site! When you inherit new websites, there are some plugins that are active but are not in use.
Is there any quick way of finding out which plugin is being used or do you have to deactivate a plugin and check the frontend to see if there is any difference?
There is no easy way to check sadly and you would need to manually disable the plugins one at a time. How to get known from a plugin that it would be right or should I go for another one! That would require some coding knowledge and testing, we do not have a recommended simple way to test the quality of plugins at the moment for beginners.
Glad our article could help clear up the misconception. Very informative article.. Thank you. Thank you so much for the article! I am relieved! Keep on working for more inspiring writings for us, the beginners! Just wanted to make you aware of the fact that quite a few of the plugins you recommend are disallowed by WPEngine. This was confusing to me as a beginner. This was a bit tough for me as an WP Beginner! Great important content!
Many thanks. Very nice breakdown about plugins. All this is new to me and I have recently been studying about how to set up a WordPress site for my affiliate marketing; I have learnt about web-hosting, domain names, and now plugins.
I need general advice. Can I get any? Will be looking forward to a response. I have seen that by using too many plugins is not good for the site. So I am deleting some of them. Trust me, like he said, choose great plugins, everything will be good all the time. Good luck! For example, I know that we can troubleshoot by removing all the plugins and putting them back one by one.
I had problems with Thesis theme and every time I would install a lead capture plugin my RSS feed would become invalid. But to this day I never found out which one actually caused the issue. I use the P3 Profiler Plugin and it was really helpful. I got rid of a ton of plugins based on the heavy load times and poor performance. What a relief… before reading this article I was totally confused about this subject. You guys are awesome. The burden has now been lifted. A great article.
Really helps clarify what the real issues are. I noticed myself becoming paranoid about plugins. Now I feel the pressure is off. Of course good solid properly coded plugins are the order of the day. A very useful and informative article which counters opinion based guidance I have read in some well known books.
Hey thanks for clearing this up I too have been wondering if too much plugins will make my site load slower. Sometimes you can cut a long story short: 1. Install only plugins you are going to use, do not leave them deactivated, delete them in this case. Install f. Here we are not only talking plugins, themes can have the same security problems.
Thank You. Well if two parties are on the same page, you can do that. However, when you are trying to educate others regarding the issue, then it is best to be thorough.
Well you guys have done a really good job by explaining all this. And believe me, we, the beginners, have to deal with ALOT of scary unknowns. I have about plugins installed on one of my multi-site networks.
Obviously not all activated on the same site. I find the P3 Plugin Performance Profiler plugin is a good way to see which plugins are causing any issues. It was very interesting for me reading it, because i was just wondering how much is enough. Currently i am using 40 plug-ins on my site. Really solid advice there — especially not the number, the quality — WPBeginner is proof of that itself. Thanks for choosing to leave a comment.
Please keep in mind that all comments are moderated according to our comment policy , and your email address will NOT be published. Please Do NOT use keywords in the name field. Let's have a personal and meaningful conversation. Don't subscribe All Replies to my comments Notify me of followup comments via e-mail.
0コメント