WordPress is one of the popular open- source platforms where many people work for it worldwide.
WordPress plugins are like its life. There is nothing exciting in WordPress without plugins.
How many WordPress plugins are possible on a site?
This is a common doubt among many people. A newcomer will get confused if he/she searches about this.
Most of the article will tell you about the bad effects of using so many plugins. Nobody will say how many plugins you can include on your site
A WordPress site without plugins is boring. Plugins made WordPress a successful blogging platform.
When you search for improving WordPress site quality, most of the experts suggest you reduce the number of plugins to improve loading speed.
Actually, it is not true. By reducing the number of plugins you cannot improve site speed. It is a wrong concept. Also, you will see that by reducing the number of plugins you can improve site security. This is also a wrong concept.
The only thing that makes your site slow is poorly made plugins. If you include well- designed quality plugins you don’t have to worry about site security or speed.
So, poor quality plugins affect site performance and good plugins help to improve your site efficiency.
When you include plugins on your site, make sure all of them are well built with good quality. If any of them is of bad quality then it may affect your site performance negatively.
Now, you heard the word ‘plugins‘ many times. If you are not familiar with that term here is a small explanation of that term
What are Plugins?
A plugin is a package of code and it improves core functionality of WordPress. The coding language of plugins is PHP language.
You will get many plugins on WordPress for free. You can search for available plugins and download it. Install this plugin on your admin area.
Purpose of WordPress Plugins:
You can use plugins for many purposes. Customize your website according to that. The main functions you can do by installing plugins are
- Improve SEO
- Filter our spammy comments from your post
- Caching your site
- Create a contact form
- Navigate users to a call to action page
- Build an email marketing list
You can also use plugins for analytic purposes. They track your visitor’s interest and their whereabouts.
There are 55000 plugins available to download. So you have a wide range of choice to decide from. But when you pick one, try to pick one with good quality. Don’t choose plugins that affect your site overall performance.
What are the important points to be considered while choosing plugins?
There are basic things to be considered when you choose plugins for your site. If you concentrate on those points, you can measure your plugin value.
Here are some important points you need to check before selecting a plugin for your WordPress site.
How to Choose WordPress Plugins?
Consider plugin quality:
The first thing you need to consider while picking a plugin for your site is the quality of it.
Always choose your plugins intelligently to avoid more security and performance issues.
In my opinion, choosing nulled plugins are not suitable. If you can pay for plugins then it will be excellent.
Free plugins do not always come in good quality. It is easy for a hacker to stroll in. if you installed a null plugin on your site. So be careful to pick a quality plugin
Consider plugin functionality:
Choose plugins that improve user experience and site performance. Instead of choosing a flashy attractive plugin, consider its functionality also.
Make sure the chosen plugin will not affect your sites performance and efficiency.
Don’t choose plugins that may crash your site:
Always check plugins compatibility. You can use tools for that. By choosing less compatible plugins may crash your site. So don’t take any risk by choosing plugins that conflict with each other.
Choose the most reliable plugin:
One of the most popular questions is how to minimize risk?
When it comes to business, risk is inevitable. Same happens here.
A well-built plugin may solve your problem. Check on the internet about each plugin and find out everything related to them. Also, find out some top plugins and their reviews.
Download the one you want as per your requirement. Don’t worry about the risk.
So, you got some important points to be considered while picking a plugin for your site.
If you don’t want to take the risk by using plugins then you can use manual codes. But for that, you need to have some technical knowledge about coding.
If you don’t know how to code, then plugins are the best choice.
Important points to be noted before choosing a plugin:
WordPress plugins come with detailed information. So, you will get a clear idea about it before installing. Check the developer’s name and how active the plugin is among users.
Be careful not to install more than one plugin that performs the same functions. Keep your site safe and secure by giving importance to plugin quality over quantity. This is an important point to be remembered while choosing one.
Before downloading a plugin check for its user review. Only by checking the number of downloads you cannot decide a plugin quality.
User review and forum discussions will give you insight into its performance. It is a better option than believing words from a developer. Checking on ratings and other user’s opinion also will help you a lot.
You can also check for its update status. If a plugin is updating frequently it means that developers are trying to improve its performance by remodeling it. Also, check the version of WordPress that has been tested up to.
Next section is about some important WordPress plugins you can install to improve your site performance. Check out some must-have plugins for your WordPress site
WordPress Seo by Yoast:
This is a useful plugin that helps to improve your site performance. It is loaded with a lot of features that supports SEO functions. This plugin optimizes your site for search engines and social media sites
Akismet:
This plugin helps you to fight against spammy comments
WP-DBManager:
This is an all-rounder plugin. It helps to optimize your site, repair your site from attacks and takes a back-up of your database.
SEO friendly images:
This particular plugin enters an alt-tag to your blog images and enables your blog images to get indexed into search engines
W3 Total cache:
This plugin helps to control traffic spikes of your site.
Why everyone suggests using fewer plugins?
The most important problem behind using more plugins is the sites overall performance.
Most people believe that using more plugins affects your site efficiency. This is a debatable topic. In short, the overall performance of your site depends on plugins quality.
So you should give emphasis to quality over quantity. Use as many plugins as you want but be sure about their quality. There are tools with which you can check the quality of your plugins.’Google page speed insights’ is a good tool with which you will quickly be able to check if a plugin isn’t good for your site.
‘WP speedster’ is another tool to use in WordPress. Using this tool you can analyze your site’s theme quality, installed plugins quality. Also, It shows the important changes you need to implement on your site.
Most developers suggest not to download many plugins on your site. The reason behind it is they feel that their clients will end up downloading tons of plugins without actually checking their performance or functions. If you can actually do the functions that this plugin performs using coding, then it may create confusion.
There is not any specific number of plugins that actually you need to have on your site to improve performance.
Download plugins that you need for your site and make sure they won’t affect your site’s performance. This may not be the answer you are expecting. But you will get to know why I am saying this by reading the whole article.
Your site will affect negatively by installing many plugins. Here are some problems you will face with many plugins on your site
Increase in Http request:
As the number of plugins increases, you need to invest more time in java scripting, CSS styling, and images. These cause extra HTTP requests and will take time to respond to the user’s request. Also, it reduces sever speed and sometimes server may crash.
Too many database queries:
It is another problem that arises due to a high number of plugins. As most of your WordPress is stored in your database. Your page needs to download it every time and is a time taking process. When the number of queries increases it affects your sites overall efficiency and performance.
The database will be overfed:
If you use more plugins you need to store more data in your WordPress database. As there is a limit of data storage it will be bloated if you try to use more plugins. Data of active plugin are stored in your WordPress database. Even you can see data of deactivated or deleted plugins in your database. So it is better to use fewer plugins.
Code compatibility issues:
Installing more plugins will bring compatibility issue. As the plugins are not developed by the same developer, code compatibility issues may arise. Codes of each plugin sometimes not work well with each other and may cause more serious issues.
Less secure:
While developing a plugin, it is difficult to protect it from any attacks. There will be a missed security hole that we cannot find out even reviewing that code. So if you use many plugins and one of them have a single security hole it will be easy for a hacker to hack your site. If you have any concern about your plugin security install ‘Updraftplus’. It is a dependable back up plugin you can use.
Quality affects performance:
Nobody is perfect. Mistakes can happen to anyone. When a developer writes code there is zero probability to get a perfect code with no bugs. So, be specific about your plugin quality. A poor quality plugin may affect the performance of neighboring plugins also. Thus, your site performance gets affected.
You will encounter the above problems if you won’t choose plugins wisely. Don’t compromise on plugin features because it is a very important factor that decides your site efficiency.
Is there any better solution to your problems?
Now I described many problems related to multiple plugins. Here are some solutions that prevent your problems
- Install multifunctional plugins that perform more than one function
- Clean up your database to get rid of bloated data
- Test plugins on some dummy sites before installing them. It helps you to identify its problems
- Back up your site more often so that in case anything happens your data will be safe.
- Use a security plugin that can easily find any issues that may affect your site
- Use a reliable site hosting. Every site will not be appropriate to host your WordPress site. Do your research and choose one.
- Only download from reputable developers
So, have you got a solution to your question?
Actually, there is not any particular solution for your query. By experience, you will know more about the ways to choose a plugin for your site.
Initially, it will be difficult to take a decision. You can take a good decision by following the above rules.
Plugins are very important to improve your site’s functionality. So don’t avoid them. The only thing you should keep in your mind is that try to avoid plugins that may affect your site negatively.
You can decide it by doing a test run. When you get more experience, you don’t have to do all this. By just reading about a plugin, you will get an idea about its quality.
So here is the final answer to your question. You can install as many plugins as possible. But concentrate on their quality.