Episode 274: Why You Need To Do A Plugin Audit

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Show Summary

In this podcast, Rob Cairns talks about the importance of doing a plugin audit.

Show Highlights:

1. For security.
2. Eliminate general site bloat.
3. General Housekeeping.

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Show Notes

Hey everybody, Rob here again.

In this tip episode I want to talk about why you should do a plugin audit on your WordPress website on a regular basis.

This came out of a Twitter thread where somebody was asking about how many plugins did you have on your website and I piped up and said the worst I’ve seen is a client with 80 and 70 unused.

And that’s cause for concern.

So let’s break it down real simply one security.

There’s a lot of plugins that have been abandoned in the WordPress repository, and frankly I get concerned when stuff gets a couple years out of date, especially with all the new versions coming along, so we gotta think about security.

The second thing is site bloat.

So frankly, if you’ve got plugins that you’re not using, get rid of them.

It can actually potentially slow down your website even on.

And good hosting, and that’s a problem.

The third thing is it makes it hard to maintain the site if you’ve got 80 plugins.

What I’ve seen is more often than not people install plugin and think, oh, I might use it, I might not use it.

And then they just leave it there.

Don’t do that.

Get rid of it please, and keep your plugins clean.

The cleaner they are, the better.

I saw a site recently that actually had 4 popup plugins.

And what’s worse, none of them are being used.

So if you’re going to go to a pop up plugin, find one that meets all your needs and go to one and then get rid of all the others.

This makes for a cleaner and again as I previously mentioned, faster site.

The other thing is with plugins.

Remember, they’re just code modules that do a specific part of code.

So anything that’s a real simple plugin, I actually prefer to code it out, so I’ll do that as well.

So think about really hard whether you need those plugins or not.

And then as we move forward to Gutenberg and modern word press and full size editing and all that good stuff.

One of the things I audit for, especially if I’m moving to FC and blocks, is this the plugin?

Block compatible.

Will it work in modern WordPress?

For me that’s a big issue.

I know people at page builders don’t necessarily have this same issue.

But for me, that’s really a big one.

So if you want to keep your.

Websites lean and mean.

Do plugin audits on a regular basis and uh, it’s better for security, it’s better for site hygiene.

If you need anything, please reach out.

To me at vip@stunningdigitalmarketing.com.

And I hope this helps some people and have a great day.

Alright, bye for now.

 

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