Wordpress Plugins NOT to USE!!! Achtung Baby!!!

Lol... yepp we all have been posting with what plugins we should use... and plugins we should never use... I am also thinking of opening a new blog if I get time regarding wordpress cause lately I realized I have become a wordpress fanatic lol...

Anyway, back to the topic.... Let us help each other out... we all have bad experiences with plugins... some with this one and the others with that one... know what I mean... I lately found out what plugins you should not use if you want to have a blog with relatively moderate/high traffic.

Number Uno wordpress villain is the Global Translator plugin

Number two is the Lancelhoff wordpress translator plugin.

Both will kill your Mysql server by sending pings after pings after pings.... and your host will definitely kick ya out if you are on a shared environment. The translator plugins maximizes the load on mysql significantly, and if you use Global Translator without the cache feature, its a matter of days of getting suspended for CPU usage for sure.

Number Three is using Wp Cache, Super Cache, or Hyper Cache TOGETHER. While, when you use them one at a time and use them the right way, you do live like a King... (like I am living with Hyper Cache), using them both can mess up settings for you pretty bad and if you are not so techie with Wordpress, you are in for a rough ride and a nightmare! Also, for low traffic blogs and absolutely new webmasters it is highly recommended to use them at a dummy blog first! Using these plugins have huge upsides, but some downsides as well. (Like deleting cache folder when you change host manually, deactivating cache through htaccess, making folders writable, make sim links etc.)

Fourth in the list is any statistics plugin which pings the server every time you or your visitor executes a new click or a visitor comes to the site like User Online, Popularity Plugin. While this can be significantly reduced using Hyper Cache/Super Cache, but it is still a pain when you use them. Rather for stats, use a plugin like Most commented, or use a standalone tracker from like analytics, sitemeter, histats etc.

So far, these are all I can think of... I will update the post every now and then whenever I find a new buggy or "heavy plugin". In the meantime do feel free to share your recommendations here about plugins you find you should not use.

Cheerios!

 

Nice list, thanks for this. +Rep.

 

I don't seem to have a problem with the WP Super Cache plugin - but like you said, it's probably not a good idea for them to be used together with other cache plugins. I'd like to add Ultimate Tag Warrior to the list, which is incompatible with WordPress 2.5+ and will cause your tag pages to stop working. Thankfully there's a UTW tag import script built into WordPress, so you can import those tags into the WordPress native tagging system. Nice list!

 

What exactly do these Cache plugins do for your blog? I only hear bad things of them e.g you cannot use ratings systems etc..

 

I do so much tweaking with WP that the Cache plugins drive me batty. I had a few clients using those plugins and when I try to customize their blog and I see no changes it took a while to figure out the problem. Now I look for it before I tweak any WP blog.

I really see no big difference in the load times with or without them.

 

Oh my gosh! Cache plugins can be the lifesaver of a high traffic blog! What it actually does is generate a html based file out of the php files and repeatedly serving them instead, thus, skipping the commands to generate a dynamic page altogether. Dynamic pages are generated on the fly by mysql, when someone clicks on a page/post link for example. Html files don't need a database at all!

Yes ratings plugin, stats plugin (not google analytics) doesn't work with it! Why? Because they actually need you to run command everytime a page is viewed, increasing your mysql usage like a rocket unleashed! Cache plugins are not that useful for low traffic blogs where mysql memory usage is not an issue but if you have a high traffic blog, or get su-ed/dugg, then its a must! Otherwise with high mysql usage your shared host will ban you for sure for resource usage.

You don't see the changes appear instantly cause you are seeing the cache when making changes, which refreshes every (for example in my blog) 6 hours. If you turn cache off, it will work plain and simple and you will see changes appear instantly.

 

I am currently using Cache plugin, and my disk usage rises up like a tan theta curve. Should I use that ?
What do you actually mean by a traffic,
I am getting a traffic of 300-500 Uniques a day, and around 3000 Page views a day,
Should I use Cache Plugin anymore ?
Or Disable Super Cache ?

 

Disabling Super cache doesnt remove the plugin itself. Infact, deleting the plugin wont even help.

To delete properly you have to do six steps:

1. Clear the cache in the backend page and then deactivate it on the plugins page.
2. Remove the Super Cache mod_rewrite rules from your .htaccess file.
3. Remove the WP_CACHE define from wp-config.php
4. Remove the files wp-content/advanced-cache.php and wp-content/wp-cache-config.php
5. Remove the directory wp-content/cache/
6. Remove the directory wp-super-cache from your plugins directory.

Then install Hyper Cache as it has the feature to automatically delete cached pages after a period of time which you can specify. You should use a cache plugin!

 

Is there a translation plugin that actually works? I was going to use the 1st one you listed until I read this

also, is there any way to use a chache program along with popularity contest? It just sucks how both can't be used, there must be a way...

 

Thanks for the list, Will save this list. +Rep

 

There are quite a few, though I personally recommend you using the google widgets/apps in the sidebar as they are the most reliable. I am using it in my blog and I can assure you that it works smoothly with any/all plugins of wordpress.

 

When you say stats plugin, does that include google analytics? Honestly I've never had any problems with it..

 

No no not the google analytics or mybloglog or any other javascript based independent plugins. I was talking about plugins like USERS ONLINE and such which constantly queries the database and freaks out the life out of it by over loading it

 

Whenever I activate the "ShareThis" plugin, my site does not load, which plugin is affecting ShareThis?..

404 Notifier
Admin Drop Down Menu
AdSense Manager
Akismet
Amazon Showcase
Broken Link Checker
Category Page
Configurable Tag Cloud
FeedBurner Widget
Fun with Sidebar Tabs
Google News
Google XML Sitemaps
Grunion Contact Form
MultiFeedSnap
Optimal Title
Ozh' Better Feed
Plugin Central
Position Yourself
Post-Plugin Library
Riffly Video/Audio Comments
RSS Footer
SEO Friendly Images
SEO Slugs
Similar Posts
Subscribe To Comments
TinyMCE Advanced
Top Commentators Widget
WassUp
WordPress.com Popular Posts
WordPress Exploit Scanner
Wordpress PDA & iPhone
WordPress Tweaks
WP-Affiliate
WP-dTree 3.3.2
WP-PluginsUsed
WP-Polls
WP-Polls Widget
WP-PostRatings
WP-PostRatings Widget
WP-PostViews
WP-PostViews Widget
WP-RelativeDate
Zemanta

 

Thats weird.... its quite impossible to say which one is affecting your blog....

Anyhow, you can try using Socialable, its better and more reliable than share this!

 

thanks for list...good list...

 

Thanks for the heads up!

 

How about using a five star Ratings plugin & Hyper Cache, will it affect the Hyper Cache plugin & slow down wordpress 2.6, if not Which Ratings plugin would you recommend for Hyper Cache.

 

I will be carefull with Democracy poll duplicating content of your site for the SE. Read this.. dont know if it was fixed already , but i am not using it anymore!

 

Hyper Cache does not cache files which work under a java script or flash based coding, and as much I can tell, the Wp Post Ratings plugin uses just that. So all the votes should count and will not conflict with Hyper Cache.

And no, most of the plugins actually does not slow down the blog but rather increases the load of MySql Server which your host may not like specially in a shared hosting environment. So go right ahead and use them both!