Free plugins are my weakness, I admit it.
My second big weakness after free plugins? Paid plugins!
I love plugins because I don’t have to code.
I love plugins because you can try them out, turn them on and off, update them, delete them.
I love plugins because they do amazing stuff!
Currently, this site, which uses the Twenty Ten theme, also has more than 50 plugins. Some are active all the time. Some plugins I turn on to make tests, and then turn them off.
Plugins are like Lego blocks for my blog, and I get a kick out of building on new functions that have modded the standard issue Twenty Ten into the site you are reading.
But free plugins (and the ones you pay for) have a downside. Each one slows down your site’s loading speed.
Not all plugins are created equal — some are slow or “heavy” users of resources and some are fast and “light.”
I just bought an interesting plugin called WP HypnoLinks.
I wanted to know whether WP HypnoLinks is heavy or light.
To find out the performance speed of WP Hypnolinks I used yet another free plugin called P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler) from GoDaddy.
P3 is one of those plugins you activate for testing and then deactivate.
P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler) tells you how much time each active plugin takes to load. You simply run a scan and look at the load time data for each plugin.
P3 tattles on your free plugins and paid plugins, beloved and marginal, with icy objectivity.
The pie chart above shows the relative slowness of plugins as reported by P3.
Remember, I am checking the loading speed of WP HypnoLinks.
The good news: WP HypnoLinks doesn’t even show up among the heavier, slower plugins!
But how light is light?
P3 let’s us look deeper and give the exact cost of each plugin.
Here we discover that WP HypnoLinks is super light.
Notice that none of my current plugins takes more than half a second to load.
Total load time is 1.58 seconds. I can live with that.
I once had other free plugins that I removed because they were too heavy.
P3 told on those slow plugins and I fired them!
By the way, P3 is the kind of plugin that you deactivate once testing is done.
Have you tried P3? How about WP HypnoLinks? What’s your favorite free plugin and how fast does it load? Leave a comment!
Update 2013 — See the improvements in load time
Looks like a great find, Astro.
By the way, I’d be cautious using WPHypnolinks; it’s not good for SEO – unless you are using it strictly for affiliate links.
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Ana Hoffman recently posted..Do I still Use Market Samurai?
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Thanks for the heads up, Ana. My EasyAzon cloaks Amazon links already.
Just came to know about this plugin. I will try this asap and thanks for this awesome review.
Rebeeca recently posted..McGraw Hill Design of Concrete Structures 13th edition
Hi Astro
Great post and I’m a sucker for free plugins as well. Of course I have the paid ones, especially Andy’s CommentLuv Premium and WP Hynolinks. I wasn’t aware of P3 so I’ll be adding that in to check.
Like you, CommentLuv Premium is worth the time
Great post, thanks.
Tania Shipman recently posted..How to use your own email address using Gmail
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Thanks, Tania. P3 really has helped me prune back on (or deactivate) plugins that are slow. But CommentLuv really is worth the time!
Astro, this is a great plugn, I plan to do it once a month. I have 22 plugins and they take .33 seconds to load.
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Michael Belk recently posted..Tele-health: Ethical issues in the workplace.
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Michael, I’ve been toying with the idea of deactivating Jetpack Stats to save loading time. But I like seeing my stats! I’m getting more than 50 hits a day!
Thanks Astro, this is a great way to speed up your blog. I had never heard of this plugin but I am going to truy it.
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Michael Belk recently posted..Workplace ethics in India
Twitter: issuesatwork
Anything free is good, plug-ins, food, sex…anything!
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Matt Harvath recently posted..Terrifying Tuesdays!!!! – People that you would not want to meet in a Dark Alley
Twitter: semi_madman
Hi Astro Gremlin,
How do you like your hypno links plugin so far? Are you seeing good results from it?
Is it versatile enough for you?
If you have multiple uses of the same word or phrase on any given page can you have the link go to different places?
Twitter: davesnape
Hi Dave,
So far I’ve only experimented a little bit but it works just fine. There are features involving cloaking and rotating (going to different places) that I don’t quite grasp (yet). It works on any phrase throughout your whole site. I used it on a really long phrase and it didn’t work, but seems pretty cool and as my testing indicates, very light on resource use.
You are so true there.
Plugins are great because we can save time and effort of course.
and if used and experimented properly, will turn out great in a blog!
I love plugins too, but you have to have that quick sight speed if you want to be at the top.
Peter Charles recently posted..Three Olympic Security Staff Members Arrested on Immigration Offenses in London
Twitter: DAMGFLORIDA
Who doesn’t love free plugins? Especially if it helps you manage your site a lot easier! And yes, I also love the fact that they can be easily installed and updated without having to go through mind-boggling codes that I think I will never understand
Thanks for sharing the P3 plugin, Astro. I’ll have to check this out.
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Shyxter recently posted..Guest Post: Managing Family and Work as a WAHM
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Shyxter, I have to admit I would load up my site with every free plugin in the world if it weren’t for the load time issue. I keep only the ones that do enough work to “pay their way.” Coding? I don’t have a clue!
When something is given for free, you should be silly not to try it and see how useful it might be. So thanks for this review – I’ll give it a try in a couple of days.
hey I just installed p3 plugin recently and discovered some plugins to send to the graveyard!
the timing for commentluv premium is affected by some things that load after the page has loaded like the extra security nonce fix. that calls the plugin again after the page has loaded so it can run a script to refresh the nonce numbers which makes the load time look longer than it actually is.
I’m working on some stuff to make it more efficient though, hopefully that can make it look less scary in the pie chart!
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Andrew Bailey recently posted..CommentLuv Premium
Hey Andy, some plugins aren’t coded well and have to go. But CommmentLuv Premium is a complex plugin that does a lot. I almost wrote that it’s well worth a half second! It doesn’t really affect loading since the reader sees the page while CLP continues loading in the background. Jet Pack stats takes just as long. I keep it because I like to see the stats bar. Might try Clicky which I noticed your site uses.