herb miller

WordPress plugin specialist


My Favourite Plugin

My Favourite Plugin was the topic for the WordPress Cambridge Meetup on 8th November 2021. Here’s my take on the subject.

59,330 plugins available from wordpress.org/plugins on 7th November 2021.

In the world of WordPress, there is a top 12 list
that I've been charting for some time. 
A coupla month's I've missed.

Top 12 WordPress plugins by total downloads as of the 7th November 2021

Top 12 WordPress plugins by total downloads
I've considered how they help my site with function-al-it-y
And how they slow it down as well… Not a good thing to see.
Server response – accumulated percentages – Feb 2021

Show and tell – What’s going on?

Slog – server performance testing

  • Don’t give me popups on every admin page.
  • Don’t load JavaScript and CSS on every single page.
  • You’re not the only plugin in this site!
Some of the top 12 plugins have certain stuff I like. 
To others I'm prepared to say "just go and take a hike".

I do use: WordPress SEO, Jetpack, WordFence.

I don’t use: Elementor, Google Analytics for WordPress

I started writing plugins with the brand name oik;
a 3 letter recursive backronym I thought people would loik.
oik logo
OIK Information Kit
  • oik-bwtrace
  • oik-css
  • oik-privacy-policy

https://wordpress.org/plugins/search/oik/

I want to tell you briefly, about my latest work 
to improve my Core Web Vitals, or prove that I'm a jerk. 
You want your website user to become your best friend. 
So invest a little effort to speed up the front end.

That includes Google’s crawler… it’s looking for nice quick websites.

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Test your page - prove it still works - 
then run performance traces.
With luck your numbers will be met with happy smiling faces. 
Some plugins are resource hungry, others a little less. 
You may find more improvement using WebP Express.
Reduce image sizes using .webp files

Other favourites

Other plugins used

November 8, 2021

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