Hi! This is Topher with WinningWP.
In this video we're going to answer the question,
how many WordPress plugins are too many?
And the first thing I'm going to point out
is that this is a false question,
because the number of plugins itself,
that number, really has no bearing on your site.
You could have a million plugins
if none of them did anything,
and it wouldn't slow down your site at all.
If you have 100 plugins
that increase load time by 1/100th of a second each,
that's okay.
That's a one-second load time,
and if you can get 100 plugins
to load in less than a second,
you're doing very well.
On the other hand,
if you have one plugin
that increases your load time by five seconds,
that one is too many.
Five seconds is a long, long time on a page load.
It really shouldn't take that long.
Let's take a look at a site
that has a fairly high number of plugins.
You can see in the top right here that we have 28 items.
We have 28 plugins installed.
27 of them are active, one is inactive, two have updates,
and then we have 15 must-use plugins,
which are a different kind of plugin,
but they are still plugins,
so in reality we have 42 plugins,
but let's take a look at what's here.
We're using Akismet for anti-spam.
We're using Analytify Pro to do some Google Analytics,
and that has two add-ons itself.
Blog Time simply puts, right up here,
what time it is where my blog is hosted.
I'm actually in Eastern time zone in the US,
where it's five o'clock,
but my blog is set to UTC time, which is in England,
and it's five hours different.
This helps me know what time it is on my blog.
I'm using Give for donations, and there are several add-ons.
Google Analytics for WordPress by Monsterinsights
for analytics.
Instagram Feed,
this pulls pictures from Instagram and puts them on my blog.
Now I'm not really doing that anymore.
I'm not really using Instagram anymore,
and I took down that page,
so really this plugin should go away, so I'll deactivate,
and I'm gonna let it sit there for a little while,
and if anything bad happens, I can bring it back,
but if nothing bad happens in a week or so,
I'll just delete it.
I'm using Jetpack and Make Plus, Maps Builder Pro.
Now Post Promoter Pro here is inactive already,
and has been for quite some time.
I really need to delete it.
It's not doing anything.
It's not slowing my site down,
but it's also not getting updated,
and so somebody could hack it,
but since I'm not using it, I'll just delete it.
All of these other plugins do unique things.
I don't have any duplicated functionality.
I don't have two plugins that do the same thing,
and that's important.
If you have two plugins that do the same thing,
then you don't need one of them,
and you should get rid of it,
and something that's key about these plugins is
none of them really slow down a page load on the front end.
There are some people that say
that Jetpack does a little bit, but it's not very much.
I've done some testing, and I'm happy with that.
So if the number of plugins is not the key, then what is?
A better question is, what plugins do I need,
and are they good quality?
Do you have any plugins that are disabled?
I did, and I got rid of it.
Do you have any plugins activated, but not really in use?
I did, and I got rid of that one as well,
and that one was slowing down my site
just a tiny, tiny fraction, not really enough to notice,
but now that it's gone, even that fraction is gone.
Do you have any plugins that seem to make the site slow?
This is a big key.
There are some plugins that simply take a long time
to do whatever it is they're going to do.
The Instagram plugin I had was actually quite speedy.
It did a good job of going to Instagram,
and getting pictures, and bringing them back,
but if it were inefficient,
if it took eight or 10 seconds to go to Instagram,
and get my pictures, and bring them back,
that'd be a total waste.
Nobody would sit there for 10 seconds
waiting for pictures to load on my blog.
That would make it a bad plugin,
and I'd like to reiterate the one I had was a good plugin,
I just wasn't using it,
but watch for plugins that take a long time to do their job.
And the last one is,
do you have any that could be replaced by something better?
This is something you should think about every few months.
Just go through your plugins and say,
is this one up-to-date?
Is this one not being maintained anymore?
Is there something new that I could use
that would do this job better, faster, smoother?
These are the kinds of questions you should be looking at
when considering how many plugins you have.
As I said, you could have hundreds
if they were all efficient, and clean, and smooth,
and do exactly what they need to
without slowing your site down.
You could have 1,000.
The key is whether or not any individual plugin
is slowing down your site,
and if it is, that one needs to go.
So don't worry about how many plugins you have.
Don't even bother looking at the number.
It really doesn't matter.
But do a good job reviewing your plugins,
make sure they're up-to-date,
make sure they're working well,
and make sure they're not really slowing down your site.
One last thing I want to leave you with is the idea that
too many plugins can be a chore to maintain.
They may not slow down your site, they may be great plugins,
no single one of them could be a problem,
but if you have too many,
it can take up some of your time to maintain them.
This website has 27 plugins right now,
and it's really not that bad to maintain.
I get a few updates a week.
But I have seen sites with hundreds of plugins,
and it requires constant attention
to make sure they're all up-to-date.
Now if you can mitigate this by using a service,
or another plugin, that's great,
but if you find yourself babysitting your website
because you have so many plugins,
you might want to consider consolidating some,
or removing some that you really don't need.
If you'd like to learn more about WordPress,
check out WinningWP.com.
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét