New Poll: How Many Plugins do You Use?
Time for a new poll! This one is something that many WordPress developers and designers think about: how many plugins is the right number of plugins?
Of course there is no one correct answer, but it will be interesting to see if there is a particular number of plugins that most people are using.
If you run multiple WordPress sites, try to take an average of the different totals and then vote that number.
So go count your plugins and cast your vote!
Poll Results
How many plugins do you use?
Total Voters: 1,352
About the author
Jeff Starr is a professional web developer and book author with over 15 years of experience. Jeff works with WordPress every day, designing themes, developing plugins, and securing sites. His books include Digging Into WordPress, WordPress Themes In Depth, and The Tao of WordPress.
26 responses
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I’d love to meet somebody who purposefully doesn’t use any plugins… Doesn’t seem possible.
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Jeff Starr Post AuthorInterestingly enough, I recently redesigned my art & graphics site using WordPress and absolutely zero plugins, zero hacks, and zero functions.php scripts. It’s got multiple loops, custom page views, and plenty of bells and whistles. I think it’s a great example of what is possible using nothing but an out-of-the-box installation of WordPress.
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Alex DenningThat’s pretty neat Jeff although Akismet and a caching plugin are only going to do good for any site, right?
You using custom fields for the image links?
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Jeff Starr Post Author
That’s a tough call.. I think for many high-traffic sites some sort of a caching plugin is going to be beneficial, but not so much for smaller, low-traffic sites.
Akismet is certainly good, but I am not using it at Perishable.biz and have never had a problem with spam. One or two trickle into the moderation queue once in awhile, but the trick is not leaving your comments open indefinitely. It’s those older posts that spammers like to target.
And yes, heavy use of custom fields for the Perishable.biz site :)
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redwall_hpI use my fair share of plugins, though I do try to go through and weed-out less necessary ones every now and then.
But I agree with Alex; Akismet is 100% necessary, and caching plugins are a good idea. I’d say caching isn’t necessary for sites with under 2,000 monthly uniques or so on shared hosting, but adding WP Super Cache might be a good idea around then. And there’s also a certain point where you might want to replace Super Cache with a memcache solution instead, but I’ll bet not many blogs get quite to that point.
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redwall_hp
Now I’m going to have to comment again to add onto my last comment, since DiW isn’t running a plugin that allows for comment editing. :)
I’d also like to add that reducing plugins isn’t the only route to a screaming-fast site. You can run 20 plugins and still have lightning-fast page serving times if your server is well-configured. Using a RAM cache, switching from Apache to NGINX to save on RAM, and making other server tweaks can make a WordPress site scream.
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Jillian NicholsIn response to those arguing that you can always benefit from Akismet – don’t forget that it’s kind of pointless if your WordPress site doesn’t have any comment forms. I use WordPress to make sites of static content a lot, and there’s no reason to have Akismet installed. In general WordPress out-of-the-box by itself works for me, occasionally I may use one or two plugins.
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Lots of people just want a quick site so they use WP. I bet it’s more than you think.
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Jeff Starr Post Author
Good point – many people are just too lazy to install anything more than Akismet or Hello Dolly. Deliberately avoiding all plugins is easier said than done.
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lavonneWow, Jeff, your site is SCREAMING fast! I’d love to see a tutorial on how to get the same functionality without all the plugins.
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Jeff Starr Post Author
Great idea. I will be focusing on this topic in an upcoming post.
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lavonne
p.s. Yours too, Chris. My site are really bogged down with plugins and I’m trying to decide which ones are must-haves and which ones I can do without.
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HaarballWhich poll plugin are you using on this site?
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Jeff Starr Post Author
WP-Polls by Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.
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Alex Denning
I’m using 9 which is still too many – Akismet, Sitemap, RSS Footer, SEO Comments, Subscribe to comments, W3 Cache, Backup, WP125 and YARRP. Would love to get that figure down below 5 though.
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Ryan RampersadI look at the plugins I have enabled every now and then to see if I can disable some of them. I think having 15 plugins is too many but I can’t live without them.
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The only plugin I’ve installed is the askimet. I haven’t used any plugins because I’m learning how wordpress works. So if I start depending on plugins it takes the fun out of learning and I don’t find out the capabilities I have of tinkering with wordpress.
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I’m using 71 plugins at the moment, which I realise is a lot but they don’t hinder performance that much. I’ve fine-tuned most of them.
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Steven Rossi71 plugins?!?! Wow. I have trouble keeping track of the 10ish that I use! I can’t imagine 71!
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Jeff Starr Post Author
That is probably the most I have ever heard of..
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I want maximum functionality and comfort, so I use more than 20 plugins, to turn my WP into what I absolute want to have :-D
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I activate 25 and 28 plugins on my WordPress sites
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Jon KristianOn all my sites I try to use as little as possible, if I use a plugin, it has been researched quite well beforehand.
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xxxevilgrinxxx6 and 7 plugins respectively. Sometimes I dread what all sorts of conflicting plugins would do to me :D
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Bill BennettI’m using 14. There’s almost certainly some redundancy there, but I’m struggling to cull the list.
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LucianI use WordPress as a CMS for my clients. I have an average of 10-20 and I don’t see how is possible to achieve some of necessary functionalities, without or with just few of them. Most of them if are well written don’t affect too much the speed of the website.
