plugins

Today’s question has two parts. One about the plugins and one about the widgets that are created often by the plugins. If you would like your question addressed here leave a comment.

Are the number of plugins that are installed (NOT Activated) detrimental to the blog performance.

I like some plugins like “Simple Facebook Connect”, but it adds 19 widget plugins to WP. I really only activate 3-5 of them, but can’t uninstall the rest because they are all tied together. Will these effect my blog performance?

Thanks.

Plugins can add great functionality to your blog but they can slow it down too. The only thing that plugins do until activated is to take up hard disk space.

So you can have a hundred plugins and if they are not activated it will not effect how your blog works until you turn them on.

Now when plugins create widgets they have no effect until you use the widgets. When you drag them into the sidebar then they are activated and run whatever part of the script they use to display whatever they do.

Now I am not familiar with Simple Facebook Connect but it sounds like it creates multiple ways to display items. The plugin itself may or may not slow down your blog load speed but the number of widgets you activate may effect the performance.

You do need to be aware of how plugins effect your load speed and I do think that it is always a balancing act between the increased functionality and the decrease in load speed.

Always look at whether the benefit of the functionality increase out weighs any slow down of the load speed.

Because of that I tend to use plugins like All In SEO where the increased improvement in potential search engine rankings through proper title tags etc is extremely beneficial.

Compare that to some of the plugins that just create a neat feature but may hurt blog performance. Those I might think twice about as to how much benefit I get versus blog performance.

Remember you can ask your questions you would like answered by leaving a comment here.

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.

Get the details at Profitable Blog Steps


Technorati Tags: blogging, functionality, hard disk space, load speed, plugins, search engine rankings, widgets, wordpress, wordpress plugins

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