Can You Have Too Many WordPress Plugins? The answer to that question might surprise you.
Plugins are what makes a WordPress website do more without hiring a developer. However, there are a couple of caveats to this. Plugins are script that you can use on your site to give that (brace for market lingo), POP. With WordPress it’s now easier than ever for users and developers to add that extra something to their sites. But there is a dark side if not careful about which plugins to choose.
What Plugins Are
Plugins can extend WordPress to do almost anything you can imagine. In the directory you can find, download, rate, and comment on all the best plugins the WordPress community has to offer.
Can You Have Too Many WordPress Plugins?
Yes and no.
Too many plugins can slow a sites performance if:
- You have insufficient hosting
- Your plugins are coded poorly
- Your theme is coded poorly
However, it’s not the quantity but the quality.
Bad Code = Broken or Poorly implemented Website
Poorly coded themes and plugins can cause a lot of problems. Things like the loss of data, or the dreaded white screen of death, meaning your site disappears until what ever was done is un-done.
Outdated plugins cause security risks and leave your site open to attacks. So keep them updated with your WordPress theme and copy of WordPress.
This site uses a meager 22 plugins to give it all the pop, but some others are integrated. If it’s a poorly coded plugin it could drag a website down or break it entirely.
But what plugins do I need?
I know, blah blah blah Jason, “But which plugins do I need?”
Unfortunately there is not a cut and dry answer. But you can easily follow these tips when picking one out.
Code is Poetry
A window into our world.
Sloppy coding injects technical debt into a project. The cost goes up for the developers because it wasn’t planned very well up front to keep things neat and tidy, or standards were not followed.
Clean code makes a website easily supported and maintainable. Technology changes constantly and new things are coming available almost every day. Your site you have may be great now, but could be outdated looking in 6 months.
However the site is designed, if things are not coded properly it can make the update or maintenance process impossible.
A Little Story
I was approached several months ago by a client that had a WordPress website and wanted to add a contact form. They installed the plugin and it broke the entire website. It wasn’t the plugins fault, but the web developer they contracted to maintain the site and was not experienced with WordPress.
It was sad news to deliver that they would be better off starting over. Their developers sloppy code cost them not only a website that was not maintainable, but costly to fix. They created technical debt for themselves.
Conclusion
We are here to help. We’ve built and maintained hundreds of WordPress websites going on a decade now. We know the in and outs of WordPress and can deliver a solution to your issue or update your site to perform it’s best and make it future proof.
Contact us below.
