How many active plugins is too much?
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MVP
Had a nice email off a vanilla user earlier, but one thing got me concerned.
"i have about 30 plugins active"
Personally, i run approx 2 at most 4 plugins per forum i use, so what are your thoughts ?
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Probably the simple answer is when you see a performance hit, don't you think?
Also, probably depends on the plugin - whether it reads or writes to a database or simply manipulates some php code or does intensive jqueries. I know you wanted probably want a vanilla team answer, but thats my thoughts.
One badly written plugin or database intensive plugin could probably have more impact than 30 well-written non-database intensive plugins.
Same with themes too.
I may not provide the completed solution you might desire, but I do try to provide honest suggestions to help you solve your issue.
Just intereted to see how many plugins people use, but yep performance issues are a given
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^ 17 and these all are somewhat cherry picked after testing and time. Some make usability better, several others extend forum features ('Quotes', 'Last edited', 'Split / Merge FE'). So not even sure, if I could give up many.
Haven't much noticed any performance issues. With the plugins I'm using, only 'I like This' and 'Who's Online' use database.
This is a great topic! I am really interested of hearing, since do not understand much the coding part, how much does it matter, if something is done within the core versus with addon.
in our community we have 32 active plugins and everything is running smooth. they add a lot to the functionality and usability of the forum and make me as forum manager as well as the users happy
i don't see why many plugins should be of concern.
There is obviously the potential for performance issues, but at the end of the day, just like @peregrine said, you shouldn't think of it as "number of plugins", but more along the lines of "what kind of plugins". DB access is a huge one, as is filesystem scanning/trawling. Plugins that just hook and output are of minimal concern.
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Agree, i'm also running several plugins and till now it's no problem. Get a grip of how fast your forum renders by playing around with Firebug, Chromes Javascript-Konsole and Google Page Speed. Some decent benchmark tools for checking your server config/hoster and database speed also gives you insights on your board but needs a little more experience.