WordPress is no doubt the most popular CMS (Content Management System). It is known for its numerous plugins which gives its users maximum flexibility. With wordpress plugins, you can turn your blog into a social networking site, a job board, an e-commerce site and almost anything you can think of. Plugins are great and bloggers find it interesting and time-saving to use, but this could lead to a problem; using too many plugins. One of the strength of wordpress is its plugin, but sometimes strength becomes weakness if not handled properly. It is true wordpress plugin can save you a lot of time and work, but too many of it will have a negative effect on your blog. We are going to consider some effect too many wordpress plugin will have on your blog and some corrective measures you can take if you are already having too many on your blog.
The Effect Of Too Many WordPress Plugins On Your Blog
If the number of plugin on your blog is too much, your page’s load time will tell. Normal page load time should be from 3 seconds and below, if your blog’s load time is more than 3 seconds, then you should reconsider your plugin usage. Here is how plugins work; each plugin you activate sends approximately ten requests which your server needs to handle before loading the actual page for your readers. Now if you use ten plugins, multiply the number of request your server will handle each time your page loads. If the number of plugins continues to increase, there will be a corresponding increase in the number of server request which will cause your blog to load slowly.
Another effect too many wordpress plugin could have on your blog is plugin conflict. I have experienced plugin conflict times without number when I was still very new to blogging. I was so excited with what plugins could do and as a result I became addicted to plugins, I try to use any plugin I lay my hands on which sometimes conflicts with other plugins already activated. The result was a sad one because I was too inexperience then to back up my blog. So as a warning, always backup your blog before you activate any plugin so that whenever anything goes wrong, you can always have your blog back.
How Many WordPress Plugins Should A WordPress User Have
While presenting a seminar, someone asked me how many plugin a wordpress user needs to have on his blog. While there is no number assigned as a limit to the number of plugins one can use, your page load time will let you know if you have exceeded your limit. Always use page load time tools to check your page’s load time. This will help you to keep track of the effect each plugin is having on your blog. On this blog, if all plugins are deactivated it loads with less than a second, below is the load time for this blog which is 446 miliseconds when all plugins are deactivated.
but if plugins are activated, the load time increases. You can experiment with your blog to see how plugins affects your page’s load time.
Now check this out. This is when plugins have been activated
The load time of your blog is very important for two reasons.
- Search engines ranks pages base on some factors, among the factors is load time. Here is a post that explains how page load time affects Search Engine Ranking.
- If your page loads slowly, users will not be patient enough to wait for your page to load; instead, they will look somewhere else to get what they are looking for. This is also a reason why google use page load time to rank pages because they are interested in satisfying the need of their users.
What To Do About Too Many WordPress Plugin
While you cannot do without plugins as a wordpress user, you certainly can avoid the negative effect too many plugins can have on your blog by slashing down the number of wordpress plugins on your blog.
To begin, visit your plugins’ page on your blog’s dashboard and check for irrelevant plugins. Before you decide whether a plugin remains or not, ask yourself these questions:
- What is the function of this plugin?
- Is it really that important?
- Can I do without this plugin?
- If I stop using this plugin, what effects will it have on my blog, is the effect going to be negative or positive?
- Is there an alternative for the function of this plugin?
These questions will help you to decide how relevant a plugin is to your blog.
Next thing to reduce the number of plugins you are using is to use alternative for the function of a plugin. The social follow buttons on this blog were coded manually by me. I was using a plugin for it, but after experimenting and discovering the effect of each plugin on my blog (Activating a single plugin to see how it increases the load time on my blog) I decided to use an alternative for my blog and now the load time is great.
Finally, if the plugins on your blog are so important that you can’t do without them, then I will advise you to use w3 Total Cache with a CDN (Content Delivery Network) to optimize your blog’s performance. Try these CDN: MaxCDN or HDDN. Both services are great.
I am a passionate blogger who loves to share tips and experiences. I love to connect with bloggers and you can connect with me on facebook, twitter, linkedin, pinterest and google plus one.
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Hello Admin,
What a nice topic to relate with. Load time is like a plague you never know what’s going to hit you. I have just 26 pluigns and i make sure i optimize my database so i won’t have load time or server problem. i really did enjoyed your post. do have a lovely day
Babanature recently posted…Optimizing Your WordPress Database For A Better Performance
Hi,
You’re right, plugins do slow down our blogs loading time. I’ve used Pingdom before and was really impressed by it.
In addition, i also use a plugin called P3 which checks our plugins performance and sends us an email with the data. We can then try alternative plugins to reduce loading time and clashes.
I created a video tour of the plugin and have left it in the commentluv link below.
Thanks, Barry
Hi,
It is really hard not to use plugins and it is even harder to use them. We need lot of functionality in our blog and each new function invites yet another plugin.
However, with experience, we can learn about better themes and plugins so that we can get the required functions with fewer number of plugins. Earlier I was using more than 25 plugins and when I saw Alexa was displaying ‘very slow’ in page load, I made up my mind to change everything to improve loading speed.
1) I bought Thesis 2. Though the price is quite higher, I recommend it strongly. You’ll go on learning customizing it and its truly awesome!
2) Got the theme that contains almost all of the functions I need and that is very easy to customize whenever required. Maketers Delight is really recommendable skin for Thesis 2 themes. This way you’ll save yourself from installing many plugins unnecessarily.
3) Bought plugins that has multi-functions. I purchased CommentLuv Premium and it replaces almost 8 or more plugins. Now I don’t need a separate plugin for reply-me, anti-spam, self-ping, trackback spam and many more. So having single plugin over multiple ones is really more beneficial.
Now I’m using Thesis with 8 widgets and 7 plugins that loads in around 3 seconds.
Suresh Khanal recently posted…Sapna And Her Blog H4Hitech : The Top Commenter, February 2013
Hi,
I’ve just recently went through a plugin cleanup on many of my websites because some of them were loading too slow.
I use the P3 Profiler plugin to test my websites and see which plugins affect load times the most, this way I know which ones I leave activated in the future.
I don’t use more than 20 plugins on any of my websites, on some niche sites I use 5 or 6 plugins only.
But I think every blog should have a caching plugin, a seo plugin, a social media sharing plugin and an optin form plugin.
Gonna check out my site on Pingdom right now, you’ve made me curious about the load time.
Have a great day and thanks for sharing these tips Apollos.
~Philip
Great stuff with so much useful information. I am using just 7 wordpress plugins on my blog which is on Genesis Framework. My blog’s loading time is 4 second which a little bit high and unable to detect which plugin is getting it slow down. Can you help me out in this regard?
7 plugins isn’t suppose to slow your blog down. What you need to do is deactivate all plugins and test the load time of your blog. Ater that activate your plugins one by one and test the load time every time you activate a plugin, this will help you to detect which of the plugins is slowing down your blog. If your blog still load slow, then will you need to use w3 total cache along with a CDN. MaxCDN is cool for this purpose. You can also check a post i made on How To Speed Up A WordPress Blo. Hope That helps. If you still have any issues, feel free to contact me.
Thanks for your response. I will deactivate all plugins and then will activate one by one by checking loading time. I hope I will get the culprit which is slowing down my blog.