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WordPress Plugins: How Many is Too Many?

Home Blog Blogging WordPress Plugins: How Many is Too Many?
There are a lot of reasons why it’s important to use WordPress plugins. They give your website access to a lot of features and functions that it wouldn’t have otherwise.  You can customise the website you’ve already made to better meet your needs and the needs of your users by adding plugins. On the other hand, you may have heard that having too many WordPress apps on your website is not a good thing. There are more than 50,000 apps to choose from, so it’s easy to add more than you need to the pages you make. But how many apps do you think is too many? In a word, the answer is that it depends on what your website needs. as well as the type of site hosting service you use. Before we talk about how many apps you should have, let’s talk about what could go wrong if you have too many.  When there are too many plugins, there is a problem.  Plugins can cause a wide range of problems, based on which plugins you have installed, how they are made, which plugins are running, and several other factors.  One of the biggest problems with using too many apps is that some of them can slow down your site. For your website to be successful, you should limit the amount of plugins you install. This is because 40% of people who visit a website will leave if a page takes more than 3 seconds to load.  Even worse, a number of WordPress apps may make it more likely that your website will have security flaws. With this article, we seek to understand the same and shed light on the WordPress plugins and the problems it can cause, so if you want to know more, please keep reading this blog article.  

Problem No. 1: There are holes in the safety measures 

If your website doesn’t have enough security measures, hackers could destroy all of your hard work, whether you’re building an online business or writing a blog.  Every year, there are more attacks and they are getting worse. Between 2015 and 2016, the number of websites that had been hacked went up by 32%. Fixing all the damage can take a lot of time and money. Wordfence says that at least 47% of all WordPress flaws are cross-site scripting vulnerabilities, which are also called XSS vulnerabilities.  This problem happens when bad scripts are added to the source code of a plugin. If a website’s tools aren’t kept up to date, it could also be hacked.  Sucuri says that 25% of all hacks into websites were caused by problems with RevSlider, Gravity Forms, and TimThumb. There are no new versions of any of the three tools.  A hacked website can hurt not only your privacy but also the image of your business. But it’s important to remember that any software you put on your computer comes with risks. 

Problem No. 2: The site isn’t reliable and it crashes often. 

Even the most popular apps for WordPress hosting, like WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache, have their problems. Because WordPress is an open source project, anyone can use, change, and share any part of it. Because of this, the vast majority of apps are also free. Because of this, it is possible for plugins to have bad code, which can cause a website to crash.  Because of these problems, it’s easy for a plugin to go from being helpful to being bad, which can slow down both the website and the pages. 

Problem No. 3: Bad performance and slow page speed 

To keep people on your site, you need to make sure that your pages load quickly. But the more tools you add to your site, the longer it will take to load. When checking your website, you can use a programme like Pingdom. Run a full-page test to figure out how well your site works and how fast each page loads.  Whenever one of your apps is turned on your website, the browser gets more code. That means there is more information to be processed, so the less lines of code there are, the faster your pages will run.  Now, let’s talk about the question that everyone agrees is the most important: how many apps are too many? And how many plugins do you think is too many?  There is no set number of plugins that every user must have loaded.  But this depends a lot on the web hosting service you use. When you use shared or low-cost cloud hosting, you should only use between 0 and 5 apps. If you use cloud hosting, a virtual private server (VPS), or a dedicated server to run your website, you can add anywhere from 5 to 20 plugins without too many problems. Even though it’s better to have fewer plugins, there are no hard and fast rules about how many can be used at once. Because of this, you should follow the tips below if you want to cut down on the number of plugins you have on your website. 

  1. Only use the plugins that you need

For a small blog, you might only need a few apps, but for a bigger site, you should probably have at least twenty.  As a good rule of thumb, the only way to go is to install apps that you really need. If you don’t have to install a tool like MailChimp or Google Analytics in order to use the service, you shouldn’t install it. Also, you should remove any plugins you no longer need or use. If an app isn’t essential to the way your website works, you can go ahead and remove it.  You should try plugins before putting them on your website so that problems don’t happen in the first place. When choosing which plugins to get rid of, you should be totally honest with yourself about which ones you really need. There are a few things that you really can’t do without.  For example, you can make sure that your site looks as professional as possible by blocking junk comments. The Clean Talk app is a great way to protect against spam. You should also install a security plugin, which will help keep thieves from breaking into your website. This could save you millions of dollars, since a successful cyber-attack costs companies on average $4 million per attack.  Website owners can use both All in One WP Security & Firewall and WPScan, which are both reliable and effective security apps.  Also, you should regularly update any apps that you use. 

  1. Fix the holes in existing plugins by getting them up to date

Most plugins get updates in the form of new versions quite often. These updates include important changes that fix any security holes that may have been found in a plugin.  In 2014, more than 50,000 websites were hacked with the help of a bad app called MailPoet. The problem started when a bug was found that let bad people upload files straight to the server of the users to take over the whole website.  Because of this, you should always update your plugins as soon as new versions are released. In the “Updates” part of your dashboard, you can find any new information or features. Another easy thing you can do to make your website safer is to turn off any tools that aren’t being used right now. 

  1. Take off your site plug-ins that aren’t being used right now

If you let them, hackers can use apps that aren’t being used to get into your website.  Logging in to your website and going to the “Plugins” part of your dashboard will take you there. Any apps that are listed on the “Inactive” page should be turned off and taken out.  To completely delete a plugin together with all of its files, press the “Deactivate” and “Delete” buttons simultaneously. 

  1. Install Only the Most Trustworthy Plugins

There are a few procedures that you can take to ensure that the new plugins you choose to add to your website are legitimate before you actually install them. First things first, you need to check to see when the plugin was most recently updated. There are certain plugins that receive weekly updates. You shouldn’t install a plugin if you find one that hasn’t been updated in more than a year, so keep an eye out for those.  There are some obsolete plugins that will provide you a warning that they haven’t been updated, saving you the trouble of having to check for the date yourself. You should look at the total number of reviews and downloads that a plugin has as well. A reasonable rule of thumb is to have at least four stars and more than one hundred thousand downloads.  Support for a plugin is absolutely necessary because you will want resources in the event that you ever run into an issue. Examine the “Support” tab that is associated with the description of each plugin. It should take you directly to a support page or forum when you click on it. In the event that it does not, you should not download the plugin.  Check the source code of a plugin before you download it to make sure that it is well-organized and as concise as feasible.  If you do not have the time to do this, you should at least check to see that the plugins you wish to get came from developers who have a good reputation. In conclusion, if you feel overwhelmed by all of this information, your best bet is to get in touch with a WordPress plugin specialist. 

  1. Get Help From an Experienced WordPress Plugin Developer

A WordPress plugin expert can provide you with professional assistance to prevent you from making an expensive error, regardless of whether you are new to WordPress or require assistance in locating the appropriate plugin for your website.  WPTangerine is one of the many WordPress support services that may assist you with repairing broken pages on your website, improving your site’s search engine optimisation (SEO), managing your site, and doing many other things. You can also ask the community for help about a plugin by contacting them on Twitter or through the Slack channel. 

Conclusion 

When it comes to establishing and managing a successful website, WordPress plugins are absolutely necessary. However, having an excessive number of WordPress plugins installed on your website is problematic. A website with an excessive number of plugins is more likely to experience security breaches, site crashes, poor performance, slow loading speeds, and other issues.  Never use more than 20 different plugins; this is a decent rule of thumb. If your website is hosted on shared hosting or a low-cost cloud hosting service, you should make every effort to limit the number of plugins you use to no more than 5. Use only the plugins that you are certain you require, and make sure to update plugins on a regular basis to close any security loopholes they may have. You should deactivate any plugins that are currently installed on your website and should only install plugins that come from trusted firms and developers.  Finally, if you have questions about plugins or need assistance managing the ones already installed on your site, you should seek the assistance of a WordPress plugin specialist. The longer you wait to remove inactive and potentially harmful plugins from your website, the more damage will be done. Reduce the number of plugins that are currently installed today.   
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