How many plugins is optimal?

Saturday, March 13th, 2010 at 10:29 am

Don’t you just love an open ended question that there is no right answer for everyone? Really I went through a few of my blogs and run between one plugin and over twenty.

Now to be truthful the blog with just one is really not a blog but a membership site that is password protected. It is not being indexed and I don’t want it to be. All I need there is a secure place to deliver the content to the subscribers.

Now on the upper end, the blog with more than twenty is a test blog that I use to check compatibility with groups of plugins and themes. I do not like to test plugins on any of my good blogs until I have used them on the test blog.

That being said when you have over 20 plugins it will slow down the blog.

That is why the perfect answer will always be a trade off. The trade off is slowness versus how much you want the feature the plugin adds to your blog.

That is why there are certain plugins that have a higher priority than others. Plugins that deal with spam and making the blog more search engine friendly area much higher priority than those that add a neat feature.

Even here it depends on the feature and how well it works for you. My exit light box pop is very effective in adding subscribers so that has a greater value than the new Google Buzz button on this blog.

Now I use them both but if my speed becomes a problem (one reason why you need to be using Google Webmaster Tools) the Buzz button would go first.

Now adding WP-Super Cache was a case where an addition speeded up the blog load speed. ( A quick note on this plugin turn it off when you are editing your themes. Drove myself nuts, a short trip I know, when I changed the theme on my other blog until I turned it off <oops>)

So ultimately the optimum number will depend on what they are doing, what effect do they have on load speed and how high on your priority list they are.

For me on average it ends up at 12-14 plugins on my niche blogs and closer to 19-20 on my marketing blogs. How many do you think is your optimal number? Let me know and I’ll get into the plugins I am currently using by category and rate them in the future.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy.

After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably.

If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.