10 reasons why plugin overload is a bad thing

Posted by Ben on June 10, 2009 | Permalink | Hits: 666 
Tags: plugins

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Sidenote: Have you visited the Top Ten Blog Tips homepage recently? I've reorganised my categories so it should be easier to find previous posts.

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Having too many plugins on your blog is not a good idea. Here are 10 reasons why.

1. Upgrading will become a nightmare.

The more plugins you have, the more incompatibilities that may arise when you upgrade your blogging platform. You may have to disable your plugins before doing the upgrade, then enable them one by one once the upgrade is complete.

2. Security issues.

Many of your plugins will do various things to your database. Now, what's going to happen if you install a plugin that has security problems?

All software can have issues, but installing loads of plugins on your blog is like running dozens of different packages, all with their own security procedures (or lack thereof). While your blogging platform may be solid as a rock, installing a badly written plugin could bring the whole site down.

If you do have problems, switching to another platform may not solve your woes if you install loads of plugins there, too.

3. Your blog may end up running much more slowly.

Some plugins are very resource-intensive. Some plugins are badly coded. Some rely on someone else's server. These are the reasons why you should always test your blog immediately after installing a new plugin. If everyone did this instead of installing loads of plugins in one go, it would be a lot easier to find the problem.

4. You have to disable ALL plugins if one goes wrong.

Troubleshooting a bad plugin is not much fun. It takes time, and it's not particularly exciting. Once you've done this a few times, the wide range of available plugins might not seem like such a great feature.

5. Your host may shut down your site due to excessive CPU usage.

Badly coded plugins can cause major problems to the point where your host shuts down your site until you sort it out. It's not a good situation to be in.

I've heard people saying things like, "If your host shuts you down without talking to you first, get a better host". I don't agree at all. Firstly, very few people can afford a dedicated server - most sites use shared hosting, which is considerably cheaper. There are a lot of shared hosts who will shut you down if you cause major problems on the your server, as it affects other customers. Secondly, a LOT of people don't pick up their emails immediately for whatever reason. So if the host emailed you when the problem occurred and you replied 12 hours later to say "sorry I was sleeping" or "sorry I was at work" - well, that doesn't really help them. It's your responsibility to ensure that you don't bring the server down - if you do, your site's going to be taken offline until you sort it out.

If you have a big enough site that you can't afford to have any downtime due to problems with plugins or scripts, don't use shared hosting. You get what you pay for.

6. Some plugins may break other plugins.

What if a plugin defines something that another plugin has also defined? What if one plugin changes something that other plugins rely on? There are all kinds of ways for one plugin to break another, and with so many plugins out there, can you really test every possible scenario?

The fewer plugins you have, the less chance there is of two plugins conflicting.

7. Some plugins may have inconsistent interfaces.

Any plugin that has a user interface - a screen that you go to in order to change the settings - could potentially have its own interface. If every plugin uses an inconsistent interface, that's a lot of new screens to learn. Not all plugin authors will create plugins with usability in mind, so some of them may be very confusing to use.

8. You may depend on plugins that stop being supported or developed.

This could happen no matter how many plugins you use, but as with most of the points on this list, it's more likely to occur if you use a lot of plugins. What happens if your favourite plugin is not supported anymore, and it stops working at some point in the future?

The beauty of open source development is that other people could take on an abandoned plugin, but in reality, does this usually happen? If it was a one man project, who else will know enough about the code to be able to take it on?

9. Every time you set up a new blog, it takes forever to install the plugins.

I like running multiple blogs, so the "famous 5 minute install" is great for me. Except it's never 5 minutes, once you factor in the time it takes to install and configure all those plugins. You should try it sometime. It's easy to forget how much customisation you've done on your blog and how long it would take to set up a new one. Plugins do not make the situation any easier.

10. Running an accessible blog with valid HTML can become almost impossible.

This is because of the differing coding styles used by plugin authors. If a plugin produces horrible HTML, validating your code will be a lot tougher.

The reason why I validate my code is quite simple - any new errors that appear will be much easier to identify and fix. You might also be interested in my post, 10 misconceptions about web accessibility.

Footnote

This post paints a bleak picture, but I'm not completely against plugins. There are good plugins out there that many bloggers are happy with. The main thing to be aware of is that the more plugins you install, the more likely it is that you'll encounter some of the problems outlined in this post. Choose your plugins carefully, test them out before you commit to them, and keep an eye out for larger plugins that replace several smaller plugins.

What do you think? How many plugins are you running on your blog? What problems have you noticed, if any?

Comments on 10 reasons why plugin overload is a bad thing

4

Ben | June 14, 2009 | 180 comments

Jim - I think that would be OK.

Thanks for the comments guys. :)