I’ve known for a long time that WordPress plugins extend load times of both the front-end site and the administrative interface on the back-end. Each one has numerous sets of PHP calls and, since each page is loaded dynamically, every plugin has to be called and checked to see if it is included or not. WordPress leaves nothing out, so the more plugins you have, the slower it becomes as it has to check more and more.
What’s worse, if you have inefficient plugins, they can slow your site down to a crawl. The fault isn’t WordPress’s, your web host, or an overly-large image, but rather is due to poor javascript execution, logic loops, redundant code, or other culprits of Programming Gone Wild. In these cases, the only options are to rewrite the plugin to make it more efficient or ditch it altogether.
Tired of my administrative interface taking forever to load and switch pages, I decided to test each plugin I use individually to discover the culprit and expunge it from my WordPress installation. Some of the instigators were surprising, but they’re all gone now.
