wordpress plugins are excellent value and add a heap of features to an otherwise plane old blog. But how many is too many? How many do you run? What is the record? I run over 60 of the critters on top of my 2.7 installation. As far as I’m aware – my blog runs as stable as. To see what I have under the hood – click here.
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[...] Original post: How many WordPress plugins is too many? | Robert@PNG [...]
[...] Original post: How many WordPress plugins is too many? | Robert@PNG [...]
Rob, this article said that it had three comments – but there were none… and you said that your blog was running well, as far as you knew ! Well, there you go bro ! lol
lol straight back at ya bro…
There are in fact four comments.
In blogging terms a trackback is a type of comment – and this post has three (have a closer look).
A trackback is a link from one blog to another.
I must say though… you are very observant.
Want a job as a tester?
R
Don’t forget its not just the speed of loading, each time you had a plugin your adding code. You don’t want your pages to get too code heavy.
Any suggestions or guidelines on how many plugins is a good balance?
I love plugins because they add functionality to my blog but am also aware – as per your comment – they also impact performance and add to load times.
How does one find that balance?
R
Reguarding the loading of WordPress plugins… it is evident that certain plugins don’t necessarily need to load their css and js on every page… but they DO!
This is something that should be fixed, maybe with another plugin :) or you could manually see what files are loaded by what plugins, and write up a conditional header loader and delete the wp_head function from your themes header function… problem here is that you would need to update for each new plugin and remove for deleted plugins.
For instance, several plugins will load a large javascript file, that only gets used on one or two certain pages! (i.e. wp-commerrce, calendar plugin, some of the facebook (and social app) plugins load a ton of extra code, and sometimes their servers experience huge delays, and that is transferred to the content loading on your blog!! Especially some of those Facebook plugins)
Many plugins don’t even load any extra code that will slow down WordPress, but just change some functionality or another (i.e. link order and category order … plugins like that.
I am using 37 plugins on WordPress right now… but am hoping to get up to the 50 mark within a few months!!
It seems to be a matter of choosing the right plugins if you don’t want to see a significant loading speed decrease.
I think 50 might be pushing the limits of wordpress and shared hosting a little. With that many plugins you will most certainly experience a degradation in performance.
Robert
Thanks Robert.
Yeah, 50 plugins is a bit of overkill. Most people would probably max out in the 30s range, but after that it’ll be good to take a serious look at what is most important for ‘correct functioning’ of the blog. Then maybe spend more time focusing on getting quality content up, and less on finding new plugins.
There was a great website that I saw that had a survey and most people had less than 10 plugins. There are the good the bad and the ugly when it comes to plugins. Some are no longer supported and are out of date. These can slow your database down or even crash your site. It is one of the first things I look for if my site goes down after an upgrade.
bgood
Bill
right on Bill. I would love to think of only 10 plugins, and I think that is both a great place to start, and a goal to aim for, even if you know your going to miss. I’m running 28 plugins “just fine” (i.e. I am happy with the site performance), with 6 disabled plugins that I keep on hand until I make a final elimination/use decision on them.
The coding is getting a little more solid these days, and the good plugins are standing out a little more above the crowd. But, just like you say, some are no longer supported, and the age of a plugin is a serious thing to consider when it comes to database interaction. Thanks for bringing that one up, I’m going to check through the older plugins of mine to see if they may be causing any problems.
I just updated to WP 3.1 and I have to find a plugin that is making the site deathly slow… Like checking 5 emails before the page loads ):
I am not a coder with PHP and so Relied on plugins, probably about 20+.
Seems like the coding is the way to go if you have the time and know how to do it…
Thanks for the feedback