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 thousand to choose from and you ask me to pick one?
If I don't list a couple I won't feel my job's done.

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.

This list contains the plugins that have been used a lot.
Some of them are favourites. Others they are not!

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.

I want all my plugins to do a certain job. 
Play nicely with the others. Do not act like a yob.

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

My current favourite plugin did not come off the shelf.
To be honest, most of the ones I like are those I wrote myself.

I started writing plugins with the brand name oik;
a 3 letter recursive backronym I thought people would loik.

OIK Information Kit

Since then I've use the prefix on quite a lot of stuff. 
I won't list all the plugins here; I think I've said enough.

I want to tell you briefly, about my latest work 
to improve my Core Web Vitals, or prove that I'm a jerk.

The plugin - oik-unloader -  has just one thing to do...
Deactivate the plugins that are of no use to you.

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.

Pick an URL that's often viewed and start to take things out.
Do you really need that logic on your Home page or About?

Test your page - prove it still works - 
then run performance traces.
With luck your numbers will be met with happy smiling faces.

Now there are caveats for sure, so please don't go ballistic. 
Performance tweaking's best approached with a method that's holistic.

Some plugins are resource hungry, others a little less. 
You may find more improvement using WebP Express.

WebP Express

This week my favourite plugin is another one from me.
Download it from oik-plugins. 

And the best thing is it's FREE!

© Copyright Herb Miller 2021

Other favourites

oik-bwtrace

SB Chart block

Slog

November 7, 2021

November 8, 2021