Developing your website is hard whether you’re a business owner, agency owner or a developer.  To recap a previous blog about the 3 reasons less is more when designing your website: You can measure your progress, you avoid trapping the customer, and you give your customer what they want. Designing your website with the less is more mindset will almost certainly set you up for success, but how do you develop a website that does that?

That will be the topic of today’s post. In another previous post about preventative maintenance you can do on your website to prevent it from crashing I discussed two very important things I want to bring to light.  The first is installing fewer plugins, especially plugins you don’t need.  The second is installing the right plugins, functionality that is mission-critical and/or is lightweight in function and usability.

When you are developing your website if you are holding these two mindsets for preventative maintenance at the forefront the end results are…

You speed up your website’s load time

A plugin has the inept ability to insert stylesheets and lines of html and javascript in different parts of your website.  Every time this is done that new code has to load with everything else your website loads when you open it.  Simple math here.  The more sheets and code your site has to load, the longer its going to take.

Now it is true that the addition of caching and code-condensing plugins like WP Rocket help speed up your website.  That is the only exception to the less is more rule here as it pertains to decreasing your website’s load time.

Be safe, don’t install a plugin unless its absolutely necessary.  Do a website speed test before and after its installed.

You reduce the amount of updates and length of the updates

Another math and logic-based point.  The less plugins you have to update… the less time it takes to update them.  Instead of your website saying its performing maintenance for 5 minutes it could only be displaying that message for 1 minute.  If there are less updates to make because you have so few plugins to update the result is a faster-updating and easier to maintain website. Plain and simple.

You decrease the overall probably of experiencing website downtime

When plugins conflict with each other nobody wins.  Every time you introduce a new plugin to your website it is good to monitor it daily for performance.  Sometimes the longer a new plugin is installed after a while you can start to experience performance issues, or even worse your website could crash.

Don’t let this be you.  Be intentional about the plugins you install and ensure they are compatible with not just your existing plugins, but they are light weight and function the way you expect them to every time.

Wrap Up

I hope this blog was helpful in helping you understand the importance of practicing minimalism with your WordPress website. If you need help making updates or changes to your website the team at Personable Media is here to help you!