The Problem with WordPress Plugins

Chris Coyier digs into (and at) the top 20 most popular WordPress plugins:

It struck me recently how this list of plugins I saw in the 2023 Annual WordPress Survey wasn’t full of fun and interesting plugins that do interesting and unique things, they mostly just fix boring problems that users shouldn’t even be worried about having to fix at all.

I’ve used several of these plugins at various points over the years, and I agree with Chris that a lot of these are ‘solving’ problems that could be addressed by the WordPress software itself doing a better job. These days, I use as few plugins as possible. One of those (LiteSpeed) is there because my hosting provides it, while the rest just add some functionality that WordPress doesn’t have baked-in.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m increasingly leaning towards moving to a static website, with a little dynamic stuff for specific purposes. That most of the plugins I currently use with WordPress are there to fix things that WordPress can’t or won’t do itself is a major factor in that train of thought. It’s a long-term project, however, and will require a lot of planning, but I’m liking the idea of not having nearly as much maintenance to do on this site.