WordPress is one of the most popular CMS now a days. The most attracting thing about WordPress is abundance of plugin and their easy integration. Different types of  plugins are  available for WordPress, but the question arises is “How many WordPress Plugins one should install ? Does having more plugins good or bad ? Does it effect the Site performance ? What about  plugins effect on load time of site? What about the Security of site & SEO ?

There are many doubts related to WordPress plugins. Here at Templatetoaster WordPress  theme builder, this article is going to clear all your doubts. You will also learn about the essential & core plugins that your WordPress site must have. It will also solve some of the queries on plugins aspects, such as page load time, search engine optimization, security, and spam protection.

WordPress without plugins is like having a site with very little or basic functionality. Different types plugins are available for WordPress today. Most plugins offer basic functionality for free and charge for premium features. One can directly install the plugin with two methods firstly, Go->Plugins->Add new->Search for the required one and install it. Secondly download the plugin->and upload it to ->Plugin section of your site. Once you are done with it go for->Installed plugins ->Activate/Deactivate the plugin.

Installing plugins is like adding an extra feature to your site without coding to enhance the functionality. But adding the outdated/unnecessary plugins may slow down the site speed resulting in high load time.

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Lets discuss more on effect of Plugins on website

WordPress offers a great range of plugins to help you improve the performance, security or more about your website. depending upon the function of a plugin and the resources it may require, it can have a certain impact on the overall performance of your website. Let’s discuss the impact a right plugin can have on your WordPress website in the following section-

Performance

There are plugins that may affect the site by degrading its performance. Basically, the impact of a WordPress plugin on the website performance and speed depends on where the plugin is being loaded. Such plugins may Front End or the Back End ones. Front end Plugins may add an extra Javascript/jquery code or some Custom CSS code impacting the site speed while backend  plugins may effects the site by having more database calls & queries to the same database again & again. For instance, if you have galleries, sliders, contact forms, etc, plugins then it can have direct impact on your front end. Meanwhile those plugins suppose to perform a certain task in the main admin area, it may not have any impact on the website’s performance.

Nevertheless, plugins that perform regular background processes like 404 monitoring, broken link checking, etc, can significantly reduce the website’s performance.

Security

Some plugins  may have strong and serious vulnerability problem that may compromise with site security. They can add security loopholes or can directly inject Malware. It is always recommended to download plugins from the WordPress Plugins Repository or from a very reputed plugin author. apart from that, always keep your plugins up-to-the-date. It is not uncommon for the oversights to happen. In fact, outdated plugins can lead security vulnerabilities and loopholes. However, you can always check the reviews and ratings before installing a plugin on your website.

Complex Operation

Some plugins query large amount of data and perform operation on that. Fetching and handling data incorrectly may adversely effect performance of the site. Some plugins, especially the front-end plugins may require custom styling and scripts to work properly. Therefore, it will end up requiring extra JS or CSS files. This, ultimately, will lead to slowed page load time. In short, proper scripts and styles are required for complex functions to carry out properly.

Remote Request

Remote Request is also one of the counted feature impacting WordPress site. It include calling or requesting to external or Third party services for the fulfillment of query. It  also effects the security of a site.

Compatibility Issue

Its not always necessary that a plugin will be compatible with your theme unless you use a standard compliant WordPress Theme design software like TemplateToaster to create a website. Moreover, using tested and updated or compatible plugins should be the preference. You should check out the plugins details before installing or activating them. As we have mentioned before, WordPress repository contains over 55K plugins. It sounds rich but users often struggle when it comes to finding a compatible plugin. To overcome this issue, try to read about the plugins and its requirements including, the WordPress version it is compatible with, hardware and software requirement, etc. Moreover, you can read the ratings and reviews from the existing users to know more about the plugins.

Reliability

Some plugins have severe effect on the reliability of the site by placing their own codes on every page of site and increase the page load time. In fact, increased page load time adversely impacts the performance. Check out best web design software

So, avoiding extra plugins and using only the top rated & reviewed ones should be the choice for a WordPress site.

Here are some Essential Plugins for your WordPress site:

Security plugin
Cache Plugin
SEO Plugin
Antispam plugin
Ecommerce plugin

Let us discuss them in some detail

As we have mentioned before, different plugins impact the certain level of performance of the website. In the following section, we will discuss the impact of various plugins in various niches including security, SEO, eCommerce, etc, on your website. Let’s dive in-

Security Plugin

You should take care of WordPress site security very seriously, because WordPress is highly used CMS and is always on the target of attackers. One must install a security plugin such as Sucuri security, Wordfence security, BulletProof security, iThemes security, etc. For protecting your site against virus, malware, serious vulnerability threats and brute force. Security plugins are one of the most popular plugins that adds security to your WordPress website. You can find both paid and free plugins to secure your website. Plugins like Sucuri are more resource-heavy plugin that runs routine checks on your WordPress site. Therefore, it can have significant impact on your WordPress site. In fact, we noticed a .27 seconds delay in the page load of our website after installing it on our website.

Cache Plugin

On getting calls from browser WordPress generate the pages(s) dynamically from database, it take time and resources. Caching plugins save a copy of every page and post as static files that they serve on getting calls for specific pages and posts. It highly lowers processing and load time. Some of the most used Cache plugins are W3 Total Cache, and WP Super Cache.

SEO Plugin

Modern SEO Plugins highly optimize your WordPress site for search engines. Mostly used SEO plugins are Yoast SEO and All in One SEO Pack plugin. SEO plugins are essential to your website to rank better on the search engines. It is highly recommended to have one of them to optimize every page and post of your site. In addition to generating Sitemaps and adding Social Sharing images/descriptions these plugins also help in optimizing Meta tags, keywords, Title & description and so on.

By using these plugins you can optimize the site up to page/post level. Since Yoast is the most popular SEO plugin and virtually runs on every single front-end page of your website, we decided to test that out. Before installing it on our website, it was taking 0.93 seconds to load. However, after the installation our average loading time went up tp 1.11 seconds. Nevertheless, it was reasonable since Yoast is a highly optimized and compatible plugin.

AntiSpam Plugin

Antispam plugins help in detecting and managing comment spam on your site. Plugins like Akismet, Antispam Bee, and WP Spamshield helps in stopping comments spam on your site. Askimet is the most widely used. Disqus comment system is an alternative to these plugins.

Ecommerce Plugin

If you want to sell products on your WordPress site just install one of the following plugins. WooCommerce, WP eCommerce, MarketPress and Jigoshop are most popular ecommerce plugins. They add all features needed by an ecommerce website from adding a product to cart to buy method.There are some plugins like Ecwid that can turn any generic website into an online store by adding a shopping cart. But how much does it impact the performance of your website? Considering an eCommerce website us usually resource-heavy and takes longer to load. An average eCommerce website would take about 1.16 seconds to load. however, a website with Ecwid plugin installed on it usually takes around 1.34 seconds to load.

Apart from the above mentioned plugins, you may also need some others depending on niche and type of your site.

Conclusion

How many plugins to use is totally dependent on the type of your site. You must only install the essential and specific ones. Adding unnecessary plugin may cause the problem listed above. So, find out the extra ones, and deactivate them. If you need a specific plugin, firstly check the WordPress plugins repository and find a specific one with high number of active installs and good rating. Hope this article helped out in clearing many of your doubts.