What would WordPress be without plugins? Our ability to expand the world’s most popular content management system almost indefinitely is what makes WordPress so great. With nearly 25,000 plugins available on WordPress.org alone, there are no limits.
With that much power and potential, it carries a massive amount of responsibility and it’s an unfortunate fact that using WordPress plugins can have bad side effects if you’re not very careful. Having that in consideration, in this blog article we want to go over the most important things to keep in mind when using WordPress plugins on your site so that you can enjoy all of the perks and avoid the potential issues.
1. Update Your Plugins
This is actually one of the no-brainers. Keeping your plugins up to date is essential to the safety and performance of your website or a blog. Older plugins are the main target of those looking for security holes and can also crash with the release of newer versions of WordPress and other plugins.
In addition to regularly updating your plugins, you also need to check your plugins regularly to make sure that they have been recently updated. You should seriously consider removing plugins that have not been updated in a long time (usually we assume it’s 1 year).
2. Remove Deactivated or Outdated Plugins
This follows directly on the prior point: Even if the plugin is not activated on your server side, make sure that it is still up to date. An inactive plugin is still active on your website, which means it could be used as a security hole. This also applies to subjects, by the way, so the advice also applies there.
In all honesty, if a plugin is not active on your website and you don’t want to use it in the future, It is recommended that you remove it. The last thing you want is to turn your site into a graveyard of unused plugins – keeping everything clean and tidy helps.
3. Premium Doesn’t Usually Mean Best
It is a known fact in psychology that people’s perception of value is influenced by cost. If it is offered to you for free or for a fee, your perception of value is likely to change in different circumstances.
This phenomenon can sometimes be seen in people’s attitudes towards premium plugins. The truth is that there are a lot of ruthless premium developers out there. Just because someone asks money for a plugin doesn’t mean it’s worth it. Many free and high quality plugins are made by people you can completely trust. As mentioned earlier, premium plugins are usually the best. If you choose a reputable premium plugin developer, you will likely enjoy the best performance, world class support, and constant updates. The key is to make sure you are supporting the “right” developer.
Don’t just do a Google search and follow what comes up – you know who people want to personally recommend. There are some best WordPress plugins that every website creator needs to know – whether you end up using them or not.
4. Don’t Obsess About The Number of Plugins
To simplify it in Layman’s Terms, the plugin is just an extra code that runs on your site. To some extent, you can add the same code in your PHP file file and get into the same effect. Therefore, the number of additives that you have installed on your site is unnecessary. The main case is how your coding components and resources are compacted.
Let’s put it this way: It’s better to install five light weight and stabilized plugins on your site than installing a giant bloated plugin that could potentially be a security risk. In fact, you should worry what type of plugins you install rather than how many.
To Conclude
Plugins are one of the best things about utilizing WordPress for website building. However, the large number that is available can be very difficult to tackle at first. Once you’ve formed a large group decide which group to choose and how to deal with conflicting plugins.
Using plugins to get the most out of your WordPress site doesn’t have to be a challenge. All you have to do is follow a few simple instructions such as downloading plugins from trustworthy sources, keeping them up-to-date and removing unnecessary plugins.