Don’t Keep Inactive WordPress PlugIns On Your Server!

I was working on optimizing my site a little again and I had been told by a couple of people that inactive Wordpress Plugins tend to slow the site loading time slightly. I had a chance last night to go to some website load time testing pages (such as http://www.websitegoodies.com/tools/speed-test.php) and on average it was taking ~14 seconds to completelty load the page. Now this is pretty aweful if you look at the number itself but the majority of the website is loaded much faster than that. There are certainly things still loading but most are plugins that are accessing external sources.

So off I went and started to review what plugins I might want to keep and which were just a test to see if I liked it. After looking at my list with the intention of deleting the dead weight I was amazed that all of the plugins that I wasn’t actually running live were garbage. So a select-all and delete it was! A quick check back with the speed testing sites and now I am averaging a load time in the neighbourhood of 11 seconds. Still not optimal but a definate part of the problem.

Happy blogging lads!