The Plugin Purge

I’ll be the first to sing the praises of Word Press to others. In fact, the only reason this blog exists is because of Word Press. It’s an easy platform that helps thousands of folks stake their claim of the vast interwebs. And with thousands of plugins to choose from and install they can customize your blog any way you see fit.

And folks do install those plugins at great length. But as the saying goes “All things must be in moderation.” I’ve been a website host for over 4 years and one thing I’ve noticed is the lack of regular “maintenance” people do on their sites. When it comes to Word Press I’ve noticed that folks find it a little too easy to just install a plugin and forget about it.

I’ve worked on blogs that have an entire laundry list of plugins installed and activated (I’m talking well over 15 folks). The effect is that the blog loading slows drastically because some plugins don’t play nice with each other or you get a badly coded plugin that causes other issues. And let’s not even talk about those awful Error messages that pop up all over the place.

Since it’s Spring Cleaning time I urge you to take a look at your blog (or pay someone to do it) and do a little preventative maintenance. Below are some items you should look at regarding your blog’s plugins.

Back it On Up:
Before you start tinkering with anything back your shit up. That way if you make a mess of it you can restore no problem-o.

Get All Dr. Phil:
It’s time to get personal with your plugins. Go to your admin area and click on the Plugins tab. One by one go down the list and ask yourself have you HONESTLY used the plugin actively on your blog in the last 60 days? Is that plugin REALLY making life easier for you or is it just taking up space. If you’re a self admitted plugin whore this may be a hard task. But if you do it right you may just find there’s a lotta plugins hiding out that have worn out their welcome. Start purging.

Brings Back Memories (or does it?) :
While looking at your plugin list do you find plugins that you don’t even remember why you installed them in the first place? Visit the plugin site to read up on it’s purpose and if it’s not something you’re actually using then get rid of it.

Good Things Don’t Always Come in Threes:
You don’t need multiple plugins that do the same thing. Do you really need 3 “What I’m Reading Now” plugins? No, you don’t. In fact they might just be working against each other code-wise. Pick your fave of the group and ditch the extras.

De-Clutter:
If your plugins are piling up in the back-end that usually equals clutter on your blog-front somewhere. Take a hard look at everything in the sidebars of your blog, if you aren’t actively using it but don’t want to toss it just yet consider making a separate page for all the random shit to live in then link the page in the sidebar. Or better yet try taking something out completely. If you don’t hear anything from your readers and you totally forget about it after two days then it means it wasn’t even missed.

The Dreaded ‘U’ Word:
After you’ve cleaned out your plugins you need to ask yourself “Self, when is the last time I checked my plugins for updates?”. If your mind goes blank or you start to twitch uncontrollably then it’s probably time to visit the plugins website and see what’s new. It’s a good idea to update your version of WordPress at the same time so everything stays compatible. If you’re not comfortable installing updates yourself then talk to your web developer or someone who knows about WP and see if they would help you out.

And in case you’re wondering I use 3 simple plugins here:
-Collapsible More Link
-Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam
-Text Link Ads

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 24th, 2007 at 5:03 pm and is filed under Tech Crap. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.