WordPress is no doubt one of the best CMS out there and plugins make life really easy for bloggers like you and me. Now, there is always one plugin for anything we want to do on WordPress, and this leads to most common question: How many WordPress plugins we should use.
It took me over years to understand, less plugin we use, it’s better for our hosting server performance. Also, I’m strictly against the policy of using a plugin, which makes us dependent in future.
In the post 8 reasons why wordpress blog is better then Free blogspot blogs that plugin is one of the major advantage in WordPress. Though using lots of plugin will slow down your blog performance. Reason being more number of queries from plugins.
Using lots of wordpress plugin might slow down your blog and if you are on shared hosting, chances of showing 500 Error is quite high. If I go with what Dreamhost says , They believe that Yet another related post plugin and all in one SEO wordpress plugin slow down your blog. Though I’m uncertain about ALL in one SEO but Yoast also mentioned that Yet another related post plugin is slowing down the blog post.
It turns out, that of the 16 queries my site now still does for a single post page, 7 are for the related posts plugin I’m using, YARPP, and if you’re wondering: yes that’s making me reconsider the plugin.
So the question here is which WordPress plugins we should use?
First thing first, Using any wordpress plugin is your personal choice. We install new wordpress plugins to get more features for the blog.
Do we really need all these Features?
Yes we do, but using plugin is not the best solution. Using Manual code to replace wordpress plugin is better way. For example : Instead of using yet another related post plugin we can use codes to show related post.
Refer to : How to show related post in wordpress without plugin
There are few must have wordpress plugin which is important for SEO or for blog optimization. Some of them are
- All on one SEO plugin : Fine tuning your blog SEO. You can refer to my detailed guide on ALL in one SEO wordpress plugin.
- Google XML sitemap wordpress plugin : Generate Sitemap and submit it to Google webmaster and forget about indexing problem.
- Akismet : Helps you to fight against Comment and trackback spam.
- Wp Db manager: A all in one plugin, which will help you to optimize, repair and take backup of your database. It also let you schedule your database for timely backup.
- SEO friendly images : This plugin helps you to add alt tag into your blog images and this your blog images get indexed into Search engines.
- WP Super cache : A must have plugin if you are expecting a traffic spike on your blog.
Now talking about non essential wordpress plugin which you need depending on your blog posts and preference. I will list down the plugin which you might like to use depending on your usage. Though my suggestion would be narrow them down with custom codes as much as possible.
WordPress Adsense plugins :
Affiliate links wordpress plugin :
WordPress optimization
Feeds : Feed subscription and Feed readers
- RSS footer wordpress plugin
- Feed subscription reminder wordpress plugin
Optimizing for mobile users
Twitter related wordpress plugin
- Tweetmeme wordpress plugin
- Twitter live blog WordPress plugin
There are many others which you can browse from Shoutmeloud wordpress plugins archive.
Apart from Essential wordpress plugin, which I have mentioned above. All other plugins are based on your preference. So try to keep it as low as possible for better optimization of your wordpress blog.
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Article by Harsh Agrawal
Harsh has written 1206 articles.
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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
good list, though one pointer, if you are not using any plugin feature, disable it as it will keep on taking memory and if your blog suddenly gets lot of traffic some plugin (specially those access mysql tables) can bring down your sit
Nice point Abhi. Even if you are using YARPP or any such plugin which puts lots of queries it’s ok, but best sugggestion would be disable it when you are getting traffic spike.
I’ve been exchanging tickets with my current hosting (30 ticket replies so far) trying to nail down what causes my account to use 60% of CPU usage in PHP Calls
Not sure which plug-in is causing this but I’ve disabled newly installed plug-ins but so far haven’t nailed it yet.. Might try your suggestion on putting a manual code although I don’t understand. It’s a PHP code as well so why would it make a difference? (compared with using a plugin)
I recently faced the same problem with my another blog which is hosted on DH server, They told me that the issue is because of ALL in one SEO and YARPP and I didn’t installed Super cache plugin. I removed YARPP and installed super cache and blog comes back to normal after that
Thanks Harsh for this post.
I have a question for you. I have 22 plugins installed on my blog. Of the 22, there are 5 plugins for the admin side of my site. I don’t think they affect my loading of my site (db backups, delete revision, no self pings, user locker, security scan). What is your opinion on this?
If I have 22 plugins and 5 are for admin side then I would say that I have 17 plugins for my frontend of my site.
Your assistance is appreciated.
Great post! I implemented the code for related posts into one of my sites to see how well it worked after I disabled YARP plugin and I’m glad to say it worked fine.
Guess what I’ll be doing over the next couple of days
Harsh, your blog is a great resource .. thank you, Sir.
One thing though ..
AIO is a great plugin ..
but Headspace2 knocks it into a cocked hat.
For SEO, ditch AIO and go with Headspace .. the post to post customisation is brilliant.
it takes some time to set up, and especially to get the most SEO advantage from your old posts, cos you’d ideally go back and fine-tune, but it will increase search traffic .. did so dramatically for me.
.. and you can batch configure titles, more links, descriptions and what-have-you.
Yoast has a good write up, I’d recommend reading that.
just my 2c.
.-= the_guv ´s last blog ..NGINX VPS ADMIN SERIES UNDERWAY – And I Thought It Was Beer-O-Clock! =-.
tx Harsh .. this blog is a great resource.
1 thing .. AIO is superb, but Headspace2 knocks it into a cocked hat.
takes some configging, and getting to know, but it is way more powerful and I can testify it substantially increases search traffic.
Yoast has a good write-up.
just my 2c
.-= the_guv ´s last blog ..NGINX VPS ADMIN SERIES UNDERWAY – And I Thought It Was Beer-O-Clock! =-.
Great post. Did you find that YARPP was causing trouble with so many queries or did you just remove it on principle?
Cheers
Vince I read it somewhere that YARPP makes your blog slow but the new updates YARPP comes with caching system and it’s great to use.
I am using 8 plugins on my blog and trying to decrease this number to minimum.
About YARPP, you should be careful about it as in can bring trouble to some of your posts, I had to remove it a few days ago after realize that it affected a few posts on my blog.
Thanks for your comment Tek3D. I was aware that YARPP have some issue but since they have added caching feature, it’s much better now….
And could you plz specify how did YArPP affected your posts?
Interesting post and comments
I actually have 38 plugins active at present
I do not feel comfortable with removing any as they each serve a vital function on my blog
I need to add though,that I signed up for MaxCdn,so alot of the server load is lightened
Having a good host is essential and with no affiliate link,I recommend Hostgator
Hostgator offer extremely fast servers,mabny plans when on a business plasn which only costs $15 pm.have quad core processing and only 5 othert accounts per server
If you expect super servers and no down time,be prepared to pay for it.IOt is futile to expect dedicated server quality and performance for $4:95 pm
Greg
Great post.. One of my friend’s is a professional wordpresser and he said that for optimum performance,you need to have maximum 10 plugins.. I have 11 plugins and the website seems to work fine..
See this,there is many plugins but with each one needs to spend hours to make them work, programers make them like every normal man who tryes to make a wordpress web site is a programmer or web specialist,they yust have to make it easy.