But They All Look Great!
Do you feel like a kid in a candy store when you browse the plugin directory? Do you have more than one plugin that puts different popups on your pages?
Even though there are more than 40,000 plugins, you should minimize what you have installed on your site. Many plugins run with javascript- almost all of them incorporate it somehow. If you have a group of employees (like the code) and the French employees are getting instructions in French while the Japanese employees are getting instructions in Japanese, everything should work fine. But if there is a group of workers getting English instructions for all the departments at the same time on the same loudspeaker, there would be a lot of confusion.
That’s exactly what can happen with too many plugins. If your site breaks or is just behaving badly, the first thing to do is to deactivate all your plugins. If you have more than one screen-full of plugins, that’s likely the problem right there.
HOW TO FIX IT
Be discriminating about the plugins you install, and be sure to deactivate or uninstall the ones not in use.
Which ones should you install? Look at the info provided:
- Is is compatible with your current version of wordpress?
- How many installs are listed on the counter?
- How long ago was it updated?
- (pro tip- AVOID plugins with last update 2 years ago or more!)
As soon as you install a new plugin, really investigate it and make sure that it does what you want it to in the way that you think it should.
Plugins are an awesome tool that can add important functionality to your site and give you a shortcut to a problem you just can’t solve. If not kept updated though, they are the #1 security vulnerability of any wordpress site!