WordPress Plugins How Many Are Too Many

Posted by Jeff

on November 21, 2008

How many WordPress Plugins should I be using?

If you spend any time at all on blogging related forums this question comes up quite often. Just as often as the question comes up, so too are the various different answers. After just going through a major headache of a nightmarish WordPress upgrade for a client I have came up with my own opinion on the subject.

First I will tell you a little about an upgrade I just did and how I came to post this topic. The blog was running on WordPress version 2.2 and I upgraded it to 2.6.3. It also had a long list of plugins, most of them not really useful and all of them out of date. For anyone familiar with WordPress you know where this is going. The upgrade went fine until I started updating plugins and activating them. I started getting all kinds of database errors and fixing those caused the visual editor to disappear. After an hour of research with no real fixes I decided to scrap the whole thing, do a fresh install on a new database and selectively import only the content back into the blog. The point here is that some old setting, probably from an outdated plugin was causing the issues.

So how many WordPress plugins do you need? As very few as possible! If you don’t know what a plugin really does, don’t activate it. If you don’t really need that new plugin, don’t install it. I also suggest keeping away from plugins that require files placed in directories other that the plugins directory. Not only do these typically cause problems but can easily be overwritten or deleted when you upgrade WordPress. In fact for a typical blog very few plugins are needed. I am not a big fan of “best of lists” and when you start one everyone else wants to add their favorite. Here are my few “Must Have” plugins and if you add yours in the comment section remember we are trying to keep this list as small as possible!

Akismet – Gotta stop comment spam.
All In One SEO – The only SEO plugin needed!
FeedBurner FeedSmith – Make your RSS feed available to all.
Google XML Sitemaps
SimpleTags – (Although may be obsolete with version 2.7)
ShareThis – Or another basic social bookmarking plugin.

That is a pretty short list and really all you need to get the most out of your WordPress blog. Remember keeping WordPress plugins to a minimum and your version of WordPress up to date will make your WordPress blog upgrades much easier in the future.

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Tags: Plugins, WordPress-guides, WordPress-plugin

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Comments

Comment by Zhu on November 22, 2008 @ 1:57 am

I have quite a few plugins (30 I believe) and I use all of them. I always try to reduce this list and I usually get rid of a couple with each WordPress upgrade, thanks to new functionalities.

Comment by Warhammer Online : More server crashes on November 22, 2008 @ 4:47 pm

That many

Comment by kermit johnson on November 22, 2008 @ 9:26 pm

I have been thinking of adding some kind of photo gallery plugin, but I would rather use that comes with Wordpress, if I can get it to do what I want to do.

Is it possible to insert the entire gallery into the post with titles and alt text, but not display a caption?

Thank you.

Comment by Jeff on November 22, 2008 @ 9:37 pm

I’m not sure Kermit but it can’t hurt to try.

Comment by Alan Thomas on November 23, 2008 @ 2:28 pm

Jeff,

Thanks for that. I find it surprising sometimes when people are promoting all sorts of plugins. Seems that a few important ones will do just fine.

Alan

Comment by shan on November 25, 2008 @ 1:41 am

it really depends on what your blog is all about, and what goal you are after. If you are up to top rankings, i think its better to have only a few. Only add the most important ones.

Comment by Web site creation services on November 26, 2008 @ 12:26 am

You do have a point there. When I first started using Wordpress, I installed almost every plugin I found. Needless to say, I had trouble keeping up with the updates and sometimes errors would occur.

I have installed the plugins in your list, and a few more including a database back-up plugin which I found very useful.

Pingback by Which Plugins Do You Want to See Built into WordPress? on November 26, 2008 @ 3:00 am

[...] is with this thought process that I always try to use as few WordPress plugins as possible on my websites, and I rejoice every time popular WordPress plugins are built directly into [...]

Comment by Balisugar on November 26, 2008 @ 9:54 am

how many plugins can wordpress handle ?

do too many make a blog run slower ?

How about plugins for security ?

do we need them ? Like ask apache plugin ?

Comment by Jeff on November 26, 2008 @ 11:22 am

I don’t know how many plugins WordPress can “Handle”. Again less is better.

Just like your computer too many “things” running can lower performance. Then again just like your computer may have tons of programs installed on it it won’t hurt performance if these are not always running. Plugin are similar, if the plugin needs to load each time a page/post is called for then yes it will slow down performance. If the plugin is like the computer program example and only used in the dashboard for specific, one-time tasks then the plugin won’t necessarily lower performance.

Security plugins? Did I note any in the list? No, just keep WP up to date. Plugins are one of the biggest security risk to WP in the first place. In my opinion adding a security plugin is just more of a challenge and invitation for a hacker to breach it.

Comment by Pink Boutique on December 3, 2008 @ 6:00 pm

I’ve had a similar experience with an upgrade from hell as a direct result of bad plugins. I had the host restore the site from backup, and deleted all plugins then proceeded with the upgrade.

Comment by Sarbjit Singh on December 8, 2008 @ 2:12 am

Your point of view are correct, however how many plugins should be how many you Actually Need. Don’t just install everything you come across. Just try to keep the list small and keep removing the ones you don’t need anymore.

Comment by Free Xbox 360 Elite on December 21, 2008 @ 11:42 am

is “SimpleTags” the same as “TiTleTags”?

as in, does it allow you to edit the Title tag?

Comment by Jeff on December 21, 2008 @ 2:34 pm

I don’t know what TiTleTags is but my guess it has something to do with SEO and not tags.

Comment by Kha Ton on January 3, 2009 @ 1:08 pm

Hi Jeff,
Another great advice on plugins that I should consider to check my wordpress and remove the ones that don’t need. Great post and I love to come back and forth here to learn more.

Thanks again

Kha

Comment by Wordpress SEO on October 25, 2009 @ 3:11 pm

Also don’t forget the more plugins you add to your site, the more code you are adding. You don’t want your pages to be too code heavey.

Comment by Ray Mann on October 26, 2009 @ 11:50 am

Jeff

I made the classic mistake of installing plugin after plugin then one day bang my hosting account was suspended all my websites off line for over a week. I just wish I had come across your advice first I am now down to three plugins as I am now afraid to go to far.

Regards

Ray

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