Is your WordPress Website a Frankenstein?

What is a Frankenstein WordPress website you may ask?

You (or your web developer) has discovered that you can install from the thousands of free WordPress plugins that give you so many new features for your website.

There are over 21,000 free WordPress plugins available and some people love to install a good percentage of these plugins on their website for these extra features. 

All these installed plugins can often create a monster! Hence the Frankenstein reference.

So here is why too many WordPress plugins are a bad thing and what you can do to avoid it.

Upgrading is a nightmare

If you notice with the latest version of WordPress (3.8) – it automatically upgrades for you while you’re sleeping. Which is great for security purposes, unless of course the multitude of plugins you have installed are not compatible with the latest version (and most never get updates).

Often unsupported plugins will break things, errors will occur and something simple as submitting a form can just stop working.

Slows your site down

Some plugins are great. Others are built poorly. This can often have a knock on affect of duplicate code, which slows things down. Anyone can build WordPress plugins and get them listed in the directory, there is no thorough testing procedures in place.

Things conflict

Sometimes some plugins just don’t work with others. It breaks. It’s like having a BBQ and inviting a bunch of friends from different walks of life who just don’t get a long. Of course this goes back to the poor code, and whilst it may work perfectly on a fresh install of WordPress it’s not a 100% guarantee that it’s going to work with other plugins you are relying on.

Get basic functionality built into your theme

Sometimes simple plugins can be integrated into your theme. Things like making use of Custom Post Types, displaying widgets in your side bars etc.

Ask your web designer or developer to  put as much functionality into your theme. If you’re buying a premade template check that it does a lot of the things you are after.

Find the right plugins

If you can’t get the functionality built into your theme then find reputable plugins that are constantly being updated.

Check when the plugin was last updated. If the last update was more than 6 months ago, forget it. In the past 12 months WordPress has seen 16 updates – so you will want to at least see it has been updated for the latest version of WordPress.

Check the reviews, often this is isn’t a true indication because poor ratings can often be a result of conflicting plugins but reading through the comments will give you an indication of the level of support.

 

How many WordPress plugins do you have currently installed? Do you need help taming your monster website? Contact me now.