WordPress is the perfect choice for designing a website and every WordPress plugin installed has a meaningful impact on factors that pertain to your site; the greatest among these is page load speed. Add more and watch page load speed plummet, and that’s something that search engines like Google look at closely. Wise site owners know this and optimize their sites accordingly.
Consider the Tradeoffs
You’re going to want to know how to sift out those plugins that you genuinely don’t need. For this, you’ll want to jot down a list. Weigh the pros and cons of each plug-in that you have installed at the moment. Those with greater cons need to be first up on the chopping block. Those that you deem worth your while, you’ll opt to keep.
Is Custom in the Budget?
This may not apply to every site owner reading this article, but it’s one piece of advice that you may have overlooked. This is especially true for those who already have made budgetary allocations for dedicated coders. If this sounds like your situation, then you might put said coders to the task of coming up with custom, lighter-weight ways of achieving the functionality that you want but with far less resource load.
You’d be surprised how many lines of code you can rid yourself of on one of those plugins that have hundreds of functions, of which you may only be using one, or perhaps a few.
Trim the Fat
Immediately, you’ll easily be able to identify at least one you can erase. WordPress comes custom-installed with “Hello Dolly,” which essentially does nothing. You might choose to keep this, and others might like it or not. Many hosting cPanels will even try to jam you with bloatware. These are essentially plug-ins that they’re paid to promote and get installations of, but you don’t need them. Get those out of there.
Look at the actual file size of the plugins you are using. Are they big? If so, these are the first you’ll want to consider removing.
Effective web design is centered around an awareness that search engines prioritize page load time. Hey, there are likely to be a few plugins that, try as you might, you find that they’re pulling their weight. Those you can leave. That is, provided that there was no easier, less resource-consuming method of achieving the same end.
We have the knowledgeable experience to diagnose and understand which particular plugins are worth their while. We’re glad to have a look at your WordPress site and make recommendations regarding your plugin configuration. Contact us for a helpful conversation today, and we’ll share our page time-slashing secrets with you directly!
