Let’s talk optimizing your WordPress website using plugins. First off, you can use plugins to make your site better. Some website desginers and SEOs will say that you shouldn’t use very many plugins and they could be right. You should be aware that some plugins add 3rd party content like fonts, css files, and javascript that can slow your page load speed down.

Another issue with plugins is code conflict. The code require for one plugin to work might cause problems with another plugin or with your theme. These conflicts are extremely difficult to predict and are an unfortunately common occurance. The more plugins your website uses, the more likely your site will suffer from a future code conflict.

Finally, plugins can be hacked, or have older code that is compromised, or simply stop being updated by their developers. Since most WordPress plugins are free and open source, this leaves website owners in a tough situation if a plugin should fall prey to hackers or become digital cruft. If you’re a developer you might be able to custom code a fix, but the rest of website owners using the same plugin(s) would be in a tough spot.

These issues lead most web development and optimization experts to simply recommend against plugin usage, but they shouldn’t discouarge you from using plugins completely. Before installing a plugin ask yourself if it is necessary, check to see if the developer keeps it maintained (at least one or two updates per year is often sufficient), and read recent reviews (since WordPress can change quickly reviews older than a year or two are often not representative of the current plugin).

To find a WordPress plugin to enhance your site, first determine what sort of new features you want to add to your site. Then check out this list of the best plugins for WordPress. My team and I review every single plugin added to this list and continually update it based on our experiences, feedback from the community, and developer updates.

Before adding a new plugin you should build a test version of your website either on a development domain, on your local drive (i.e. your computer’s hard drive), or by using a service that provides a testing enviroment.

Instead of adding your plugins directly to your live site, considering adding your plugins to this test environment and see how adding the plugin impacts the overall usage of your site including load time, other plugins, and theme functions. If all is clear you can then add the plugin to your live site.

If you are buying a premium plugin from a site like Code Canyon, check to see if the plugin has a history of being updated by looking at the last updated date or even digging through Archive.org records. if the plugin is new check to see if the developer has other plugins on the marketplace with a history of being updated. If the developer themselves is new then know you are taking a bit of a risk and weigh that against the potential usefulness of the plugin.

Before adding anything to your website you should always run a backup for your website. For best results do not host your backup on the same server as your website, but use a third-party hosting service instead like Dropbox, Backblaze, etc…

If you have the budget I would also recommend a WordPress management service that keeps your live and dev WordPress websites up to date by managing your core, backups, theme, and plugin versions and running tests similar to those discussed above. Larger companies may have in-house I.T. teams, this work should be delegated to them with your marketing and/or operations teams kept in the loop.

There are various WordPress plugins that actually help your website perform better for users and search engines when used correctly. My favorites are WP Rocket, Asset Cleanup Pro, and Autoptimize. Some hosting providers today also build their own plugins to help your website’s performance on their infrastructure, these should likely be considered as good if not better than other optimization plugins out there.

When used properly WordPress plugins are an extremely valuable tool to help your website grow and to improve your business. When used incorrectly they can cause huge issues that harm your site, your business, and possibly even your users.