WP plugins slows down your site!

I noticed that having too many plugins slows down your site due to high CPU usage. I had several emails from my host complaining about this issue. As a test, i deactivated all the plugins and noticed a massive boost to the speed of my site. But as soon as i installed a few plugins it slows considerably.

With the new site, i had over 30 plugins and was nice to have all these features on my site. But now, it is only under 10. I read on a blog that using WP super cache improves speed, but will increase CPU usage.

Which host is recommended that allows many plugins to be used. It seems many bloggers like bluehost. But i contacted them and it is the same issue with CPU usage. Unless you have a dedicated server which costs much more per month. I assume article directories like EzineArticles.com and Goarticles have their own dedicated servers.

 

Yes, don't use many plugins. As suggested by Deluxdon, use only useful plugins and avoid others. This will decrease the speed and everyone hate that.

 

What i found surprising is that before i had over 30 plugins and now only 3.
I first activated Article directory and Easy adsense plugins, but soon as i activated 'Google xml sitemap' that considerably slowed down my site.
Some say this is essential for quick indexing of your site. I am now trying to deactivate that, but cannot as it is very slow at loading at the moment.

How many plugins do you guys have activated on average? It seems some plugins tend to use more cpu usage than others.

Also, i read on a blog that to add plugin codes manually would be better for website speed.
Maybe just copy the code from your wp dashboard and paste it in your main widgets

 

All In one seo, Google XML sitemap are the only one i use to keep it fast and simple. That's all you actually need.
I dont use comments in my template files (they are useless anyway) so i dont require Akismet as well.

 

That's interesting. I don't why my site loading time was slower when i activated 'Google xml sitemap' plugin

 

I agree on this, I just cleaned up my code and validate my site's code in w3c validator, and i ended up with removing plugins, because they caused some of the errors. I actually wrote about this here. On how important about validating your site, cleaning up your wp plugins.

 

That may be a problem with your hosting company since a mere 3 plugins installed should not cause your blog to slow down. I also use the Google XML Plugin and have never had an issue with speed. I currently have about 10 plugins installed.

You could also check to ensure that your site has not been hacked since malicious code can have a nasty effect on your site's performance. You can try the wordpress antivirus plugin to detect any malicious code on your site.

Let me know what you find.

 

Stop using plug ins for things that you can do manually. for instance Google site map plug in is not completely necessary since you can do it manually.

How may plug ins you can run has nothing to do with your host, as long as you are on shared hosting...they are going to be the same.
IF you are running 30 plug ins for a Single user Worpdress site, I can almost guarantee that you are using some that are completely unnecessary.

 

all i can say is duh!

wordpress is sleek and elegant, all these plugins can start to weigh down.
bare essential plugins. and only ones that come highly recommend from wordperss.org

 

Actually it depends on the type of plugins. I had 15 quality plugins active no problem. Some other time I may have 8 and the site is super slow. Then I find out one of those 8 is causing the problem.

You wanna make sure only quality coded plugins are install.

Still you dont wanna have lots of plugins enable, specially if they are pulling content from other sites.

Hope it helps

Dan

 

It has happened to me just now, and i thought i will share. These caches plugins are useful and made my blog runs faster, but once i wanted to redirect or modify .htaccess, it gave me some internal server error. Ugh.. i guess we all have to be careful, and don't be panic if you will have this same error too.

I am just so glad, i could fix it.

 

I use Hostgator their support is excellent, toll-free 24/7, and they have Fantastico. I've had up to 20 plugins running at once on multiple blogs so I don't think bandwidth usage is a problem, and if it is they'll send you an email warning you that you are about to exceed your limit so that you can increase it from your WHM. It might be because I have another account with them (SEOHostng) but I've never had any problems, although one time I reached my "unlimited space" and had to delete a few expired domains that were set to really high storage and bandwidth.

 

Another issue is who else is on your server cluster. With shared hosting and VPS, you are sharing processing power with other websites. If a good number of them are running Wordpress, you could possibly get the short end of the stick and experience slow loads and lag times because of some other noob with 90 plug ins running.

Also, how many Worpdress sites you have on your account.

I am just going through this now. I just upgraded to a VPS a month ago and am already having to upgrade to dedicated next week. Wordpress can be a resource hog, especially in a shared hosting environment.

I suspect when 3.0 comes out and everyone starts trying to turn their single user installation into a blog network on shared hosting, you will see a lot of people starting to complain about slow sites, and host will have to start setting some limitations on MU sites on shared hosting...they won't work and it just slows down the entire server cluster.

 

Good point.

Also I forgot to mention that running to many plugins sometimes causes your blog to go haywire and you need to deactivate the one causing the problem. And they also sometimes "deactivate" by themselves, I sometimes log into my blog only to find some deactivated plugins, thus I stopped using so many.

 

Just use the plug-ins that are vital to you, the site map plugin shouldn’t slow thing down too much.

Try the super Cached plugin.

Thanks Brian

 

I had too much and it did slow down my site.

Use only the ones you need.

 

Only enable the necessary plugins.

HostGator has some good hosting btw

 

yes somtimes you can edit your WP theme .php code. only use necessary plugins.

 

If you want to run lots of plugins then i recommend that you uprade to VPS hosting