Word Press Plug-in Dilemma
Hello All:
I wanted to blog about something that I have been struggling with and would love to get other people's opinions.
There are so many plug-ins to choose from and so many of them are vital and some are really nice to have, but not vital. As you know, our Site Health will be affected by how many plug-ins we have. Our site performance will be adversely affected by the number of plug-ins we have. If our site takes too long to load due to the number of "vital" and "really nice but not vital" plug-ins, our visitors will leave and we will lose potential traffic.
I have looked over both of my websites I have created thus far and I have what I consider to be important and vital or at least "almost vital" plug-ins, but that still comes to about 7 or so plug-ins.
According to our Site Health, we should be keeping the number of our plug-ins to around five or less. How can we do that and still maintain a decent website that does everything we want it to do?
In the WA Bootcamp training that I am progressing through, I installed the recommended plug-in called Pretty Link which takes our ugly long affiliate links and shortens them, making them neat and tidy, but that adds to the number of plug-ins I already had.
Next, I created two new posts yesterday to my WA Bootcamp website and submitted it to the discussion feedback area and got a helpful reply from another WA member who had a great suggestion to "protect" my content. That is where you can "protect" your content from being copied and pasted and used on someone else's site...basically, someone could commit plagiarism using your content. There is a plug-in called Wordpress Protection Lite which prevents that from happening. A helpful WA member strongly urged me to install this particular plug-in which I thought sounded like a great idea and it is.
https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/robert-a/blog/prot...
But, here is my dilemma: How does one balance between having necessary plug-ins verse having a "healthy" performing site?
I would love any comments, suggestions, discussion, etc. you have to offer.
Steph
Recent Comments
59
This is where I step out. Too much geekery for me. I'm so impressed by your knowledge Steph. I know there're many who'll give you the right answers. I just came by to cheer you on. Blessings.....
Shirley
By all means. Many has used it when they're puzzled by all this geekery. God bless....
Shirley
Hi Again Steph. I personally use 12 plugins and to date I have never had any problems with that many. Perhaps it will depend on the Theme you use but I use Super Nova and as I said No problems.
Robert
Awesome Robert! I appreciate knowing that. I learned so much from reading your blogs. Thank you also for the plug-in recommendation for which I referred to in this blog. You are a wonderful source of information. I might pick your brain a little more if that is okay. :)
No probs Steph, you pick away as much as you like lol
I'm just about to go out for the day as its a beautiful day here in Edinburgh.
Have a good one as well.
Robert
Louie has a good answer. I might add that I ignore that part of my site health. I use what works best for my site. Some plugins really are helpful. Others are just fluff that sound good. You can check your site speed in a number of places.
Another thing to watch out for is if your post suddenly disappears from your visual editor. If it does then you probably have too many things pulling at the same time. Disable some plugins that may be running and it will usually come back.
Interesting piece of advice on how the post might suddenly disappear and that is a good sign if there are too many plug-ins pulling on it.
If you want to know the effect use Google "speed test" https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
Thank you Chris for the link to testing your site speed on Google. I will definitely use this when I add a few more plug-ins to include the one mentioned in this blog to protect my content. Although Louie had a good point - if people want to copy my content, they will find a way.
Does having many plug-ins cause a problem? Not to my knowledge. Plug ins can be a problem when they cause a security weakness or become outdated with new Wordpress upgrades.
See more comments
Hi Steph (love your avatar :) ),
I think everyone is confusing things here.
As a web developer I have a clearer view on the stuff that makes websites faster and slower to load.
It all comes to the extra amount of Javascript code, CSS and images that plugins add to a blog.
But don't put all of your plugins in the same bag. Not all of them are adding Javascript, CSS, HTML and images to your posts.
You could have 300 plugins installed and have the fastest site on the Internet.
As an example, Pretty Links does NOT make your website load slower because it works with your database (to save the original links and the shortened versions) and it is only working really when someone visits the shortened url. For the rest of the website it does not matter.
As for that Wordpress Protection Lite plugin, yes, it adds Javascript (I don't know it, but I can bet on that) to prevent people from copying your content. BUT, even so, everyone is able to copy it. They just have to deactive Javascript on their browsers and they're good to go. Or look at the source code or even copy every word "by hand".
And if they copy your content they'll be punished by Google and Google Adsense so, in the end, it doesn't really matter. I had one of my sites totally copied. When it comes to stealing, people steal no matter how protective you've become.
You have to see if plugins work by adding more code and scripts to your posts' source code or if they work on the site's backend thus not affecting user experience.
Test your site's speed on Google here (and learn what you can do to improve it): https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
I hope this helps.
Cheers,
Louie
This is very helpful information.
I will add that the site health detector on WA is just there as a warning to help people realise that you do not need to add every plugin that you come across on your site to make it appear great.
Some plugins can also conflict with others which can damage you site. So use them wisely.
Lis.
Thank you Louie. You are like a walking encyclopedia of computer knowledge. Thank you so much for taking the time to write your long reply. I learned so much.
Thank you Liz.
You're welcome Steph. No problem. :)
You're welcome :).
So are you saying that the "protection" plug-in is probably not necessary. I have also had a message strongly suggesting I add this plug-in. The WA member who suggested it also made the (possibly good) point that as my website was about internet safety for families that I wasn't walking my talk!
While I am about internet safety, I'm also about choices and awareness. So post away, just be aware who has access to your information. I'm also not about blindly adding things, but about doing your research. So do any of you know anything about this plug-in and does it actually add value,do what it says on the tin?!
Thanks.
Why don't you (and everybody else) go and check the 'More Details' link when you are about to add another plugin to your WordPress? There you can read what it is all about, if it is for you or not and also check its users reviews (good and bad).
The choice is yours.
Even with that plugin installed anyone who knows a thing or two about HTML can copy all of the content of all public sites easily. It only makes it a tiny bit harder for plagiarists to copy your text. It has nothing to do with Internet safety.
:)
Thanks Louie - good point!! I shall check it out. Nothing like a bit of research! :)
There's nothing like doing our homework. :) Research is everything. WA teaches you that too. ;)
I sometimes discover that I need to do research to supplement the training we get here. There will be times that I want to "see" how it works before I do it. I have a test site on the siterubix.com that I use to test out new plug-ins before going on my actual site.
Hi Steph, I do exactly the same thing to ensure that I do not take my site down. Research and testing always is a good habit to get into.
Oooh I like that idea - I never thought of that!!
Hi Sarah:
Yes, you can use of your "free" siterubix.com sites as a test site and put whatever plug-ins in you want and see how they work before they go into your actual site, because sometimes your actual site might "break" when installing new sites.
Steph.
Double-like!
Using a test site is a great idea. I have a local WordPress installation on my computer. :) And, also, don't forget to do your daily backups before installing anything even if you actually test it on your test site.
That is also good advice too....always back up before doing any major changes. The wp-backup (I think that is what it is called) puts your backed up files directly into your Dropbox. That was one of the trainings.
Great insight and advice Louie! Thanks so much!
Hi Louie
Very helpful info thank you