OK. Now that you know how to choose and test a plugin, let's go back to the already mentioned and highly debated question ...

How many plugins should you install on your site? Or, how many is too many?

As I already said, there are (too) many articles and "experts" out there saying that having many plugins is bad for your site performance.

Well. I'll say it again. And again ... and again ...

The total count of plugins does not matter! THE QUALITY DOES!

I already mentioned that according to Google, in 2018 a website should load in max 2 seconds.

And you have seen, that the famous Contact Form 7 added almost one second to my loading time ...

So what? I should use max two plugins?

OK. Let me show you how many active plugins I have at this very moment on my site:

YEP! I have 28 active plugins.

So hear me out! Don't be worried about performance, security, reliability, etc.

WordPress without plugins is like a race car without wheels.

So for the last time: plugins won't slow down your site! ONLY BAD ONES DO!

Yes of course, if you already have a huge mess on your site and you don't have an effective overall speed optimization in place, and you start complaining, the frustrated developers will tell you that you have too many plugins ... Nonsense!

BTW ... Overall speed optimization ... You should check this out before you start uninstalling your plugins:

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/website-speed-optim...

And one more important thing ...

There are also many "experts" out there telling you to modify your functions.php file instead ...

Which is another dangerous myth!

Adding 10 small code snippets to your theme’s functions.php file, is nothing else, but adding 10 plugins to your site.

Not to mention that those code snippets - usually gathered from various places on the web - could be poorly coded, vulnerable functions that can exhaust your server resources and cause the whole site to crash.

With that having said, let's see the last lesson where I will show you a simple and easy-to-use method that will allow you to see/check every single file loaded by a given plugin.