WordPress plugins and how many is too much?

We get quite a few “Hey my site is slow, can you help?” calls.   Of course, the answer is always “yes, we can” and our first suggestion is that they actually host with a hosting company that specializes in WordPress hosting.  If you are serious about your WordPress website and your business, you need to move out of the the slums giving you low rent $9.95/month machines and get onto a real hosting site, if you can’t afford real-hosting then you will have to manage your WordPress plugins and how many you have active or even installed has a serious performance impact.

WordPress plugins are probably the most awesome features of WordPress.  We love them and for the DYI WordPress developer, they provide a way of developing a unique website.  Currently, there are over 20,000 plugins for WordPress and a lot of them are badly written and some of them are straight out security risks.

With all those great sounding plug-ins, the temptation of downloading and installing plugins to play with is just too strong to resist sometimes.  You need to understand that plugins are like little parasites, they “hook” and “filter” the  WordPress core, adding the features that you are looking for, but each hook has to be evaluated and code within the plugin executed.   Your WordPress website is a huge web-application and that whole application is loaded each time a user requests a page.  That means the weight of all those plugins is pressing on the whole site.

So how many is too many?

While we hate rules of thumb as each plugin and situation is unique, in general we think anything over a dozen plugins should be reviewed.  Understand that just one bad plugin can sink your site’s performance, and it is also possible to have dozens of plugins and see minimal effects.  The combination of a few powerful, well written plugins and your theme should be giving you what you need. If not, it is time to re-evaluate your approach.We can help evaluate your plugins, the need for them, and their effect on your site.  The point to understand is that there is a performance cost to plugins, all plugins.  Think twice, and if in doubt, ask us!

FortunesRocks.me offers a very unique WordPress hosting service.  Not only do we offer the highest performing hosting for your WordPress site, we also offer you analytics and tracking to help you grow your web-presence and community.    We will keep your site safe, running, and growing.  Each month includes one hour free of WordPress consulting… we can help you find the “just right” plugin or develop something unique for you!

Marlin Cobb
CEO – FortunesRocks.me