How Hoarding Plugins Affects Your WordPress Website?

by Vipe Team in WordPress Plugins; Published on 23.01.2022 Last updated on 26.02.2022

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WordPress is the most popular content management system that powers more than 40% of the web. That is because of the many features the platform offers such as security, speed, SEO-friendliness, themes, and, of course, plugins.

Plugins allow you to expand your website’s capabilities by adding numerous features. This makes it more attractive and functional. However, as time passes some plugins may stop working or serving your needs and you may decide to download another one.

Installing new plugins without first getting rid of the rest can have negative consequences for your website. There are still many reasons why site owners hoard plugins. In today’s blog post, our WordPress development agency will discuss what they are, and how hoarding plugins can affect your website.

Are You a WordPress Plugin Hoarder?

There are some alarming signs that you’re a plugin hoarder. If any of them sound familiar to you, our WordPress development agency encourages you to clean your website. Here’s what we are talking about:

You do not know what many of your plugins are for
You cannot update WordPress because you have outdated plugins
You have plugins that you are storing for use in the future
You cannot keep your plugins updated anymore

These are just some of the indications that you’re hoarding plugins in your WordPress website. It’s meaningless to have plugins for your website if you have no idea what they do. What is more, not being able to update WordPress because of the number of outdated plugins you have, is another thing you shouldn’t allow.

If you have stored a crazy amount of plugins, the chances that you won’t be able to keep them updated are pretty high. Nonetheless, instead of storing plugins to eventually use in the future, you can keep a list of all the plugins you want to try. This will help you save a lot of room in the back-end.

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Why Do People Hoard Plugins?

Our WordPress development agency wants to make one important clarification here. Hoarding plugins is not like compulsive hoarding, it is not a disorder. Very often website owners and managers have their reasons to do so. Some of them include:

A desire to try new things
Ability to change to the previous plugin one fast
Deleting them can be difficult and time-consuming

For most WordPress website owners, trying new plugins and themes is natural. There are constantly new ones that deserve your attention and it is always fun to experiment. However, our WordPress development agency reminds you that it is easy to fall into the trap of not deleting the old ones and piling them up.

What is more, many prefer to have a backup plan if something happens with the plugins they have recently installed, so they just keep the old ones as well. In most cases, that is entirely pointless and it only makes the process of decluttering harder.

As our WordPress development agency mentioned, sorting your plugins may be a difficult, tedious, and time-consuming task. It is way easier to deactivate your plugins as you change them instead of when you already have tons of unused ones.

How Does Hoarding Plugins Affect Your WordPress Website?

Running a successful website is a challenge on its own but when you add an excessive amount of plugins, things can get seriously complicated.

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Having plugins that load many resources can harm the loading speed of your website. That is because hoarding plugins make the browser perform numerous actions before it loads and displays your pages.

Our WordPress development agency reminds you that having your website loading slow can damage your online reputation and can result in a higher bounce rate, fewer conversions, and sales. Furthermore, it will also make your visitors angry and they will be less likely to visit you again in the future.

Moreover, as our WordPress development company already pointed out, hoarding plugins may prevent you from updating WordPress. This is particularly bad since it can result in security risks. Hoarding plugins can also lead to security breaches which means there is a risk for people to access your backend.

Dealing with too many plugins can distract you from focusing on the big picture – growing your website and growing your business. Instead of bettering your products and services or communicating with your audience, you’ll be busy deleting unnecessary plugins.

How to Declutter Plugins in Your WordPress Website?

If you have realized that you’re a plugin hoarder yourself, the best thing you can do is to start working on the problem. Decluttering them will be time-consuming and tedious, but it is doable.

Our WordPress development agency would encourage you to go through your plugins and decide which add value to your website and which do not. Then you can remove the ones that only take up unnecessary space.

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Plugins for caching, SEO, security, social media, and analytics are commonly required by websites to ensure that everything operates smoothly. Of course, your needs may be entirely different so it is worth considering where you are heading with your site.

Our WordPress development agency would encourage you to use plugins that improve your website and make it more functional. These are the ones you must keep. Your website will be better without any useless plugins.

After you have decided which plugins are useful and which aren’t, the cleaning part is not as hard. Open the plugin tab, deactivate and uninstall the plugins you don’t want anymore. Everything should be removed unless you have some very outdated ones.

Declutter Your WordPress Website Now!

If you want to have a well-optimized and fast website, you’ll need to do some regular maintenance tasks. That’s how you’ll ensure everything works smoothly and you provide only the highest quality user experience. Decluttering your plugins is a step in the right direction.

They can take up a lot of space on your computer, resulting in sluggish loading times and security flaws. Make sure that you use plugins that serve your website needs, and help you in expanding your business.

We want to remind you that if you want to have a good site, it is best to trust professional WordPress developers – like the ones at Vipe Studio, our WordPress development company.

By working with us, you’ll get the website of your dreams as well as a long-term partner. Do not hesitate to contact us, and take advantage of our first-class services.