Plugins are one of WordPress’ strong points and they can provide additional features for users. Plugins for WordPress are essentially modules made written in PHP languages and they perform tasks that are not provided by default WordPress installation. As an example, it is easy to add a weather widget, if we have a local-oriented website. Just add a plugin and put it at the specific locations of the sidebar. So, it won’t take long for WordPress users to add plenty of plugins in their website. Unfortunately, there are a number of unwanted effects of installing plugins in our website. The most common problem is that some poorly written plugins could de-stabilize our WordPress installation, causing some bugs to appear.
Some may not directly cause visible problems, but there could be some more subtle issues. As an example, WP Policies is a plugin that allows us to conveniently add website policies in our website. The plugin uses a number of pre-written policies that are modified with our data, such as our company name, phone number, address and email. These professionally-written policies will be displayed on our website simply by installing the plugin. The solution could appear ideal for many people and many thousands others who installed it. However, it may occur to us that WP Policies cause duplicate content issues. By installing WP Policies we could unwittingly handicap our own SEO performance.
Although we may have nothing against these plugins developers, it is important to consider that their code could silently harm our website. We should check how the plugin works and find things that could raise some serious doubts in our mind. We could test the plugin in a different way and we shouldn’t expect to use it permanently. Another thing to see that the plugin should be updated regularly and it was released three years ago without any subsequent updates, it may be necessary to avoid it. Fortunately, uninstalling plugins are quite easy and much of the damage can be reversed immediately.
In this case, we should make sure that the plugin won’t work against us and in relation with WP-Policies plugin, it is better to write our own policies. Plugins may generate a number of duplicate content in our website. As an example, there are plugins that show snippets of news and this could also cause duplicate content issues. In general, we shouldn’t choose plugins that generate content automatically, because they could harm our SEO performance. Single-click solutions could cause different consequences. Plugins should be functional and they shouldn’t generate any kind of free content.
Google wants to maintain its credibility by showing reliable content on its website. It means that results displayed on its pages should be relevant and unique. It is also important to know that a WordPress website with so many plugins loaded could become a risky ecosystem where different codes struggle to work together. It won’t take long before we find issues and problems. Our website should have as few plugins as possible and simplicity could bring us great results.
