Tabula Rasa: A clean slate and why it may not be bad for your blog.

Your heart is pounding, you have visions of all the wonderful comments and fun conversations had within every post. You spend hours reading other blogs, visiting to see what they’re using and what’s ‘cutting edge.’ You download plug ins and add ons and extensions to help promote your web blog, give a little back to the commenter and just to have some neat touches to your site.

And then, it happens.

Your site is slower than that old lady in front of you at the coffee shop.

Or at least, it happened to us on 2phatgeeks. The plug ins and add ons we were using became too much and too many. While Shawn was away, the wife had played–with plug in after neat plug in, switched on and off until 2phatgeeks began to slow down significantly.

Oops. Did I do that?

In my enthusiasm and attempt to keep up with the Must Haves and You Needs and the Things To Look Out For, the speed and ease to which one could navigate through 2phatgeeks suffered. It’s hard work keeping up with everything, though, isn’t it? There are hundreds of pages of advice on what people will tell you  one must have in order to have a successful web blog. A lot of it is good, excellent advice that would not harm you to follow–but the problem is, there is so much of it. How do you know which one to follow? This plug-in you just downloaded seems to have a newer, better version? This plug-in just downloaded actually needs four more to function correctly? This plug-in works best with another plug-in!

Stop. Breathe. Don’t let it get too confusing and don’t make the same mistake I did. In my beginner’s enthusiasm and hopefulness, I downloaded and installed too many. I didn’t stop to truly consider the difference between what I thought was neat, what I thought I needed, and what I thought was absolutely important to have.

So many plug ins slowed 2phatgeeks down and no doubt cost us readers.

Choose your plug ins wisely, grasshoppah.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t experiment and enjoy yourself by trying out what’s hip, happening and out there–what I am saying is that when it comes to the core plug ins to use with your weblog, make sure they are all the plug ins you absolutely cannot live without and make sure you aren’t compromising the speed, in addition to the performance of your site! Too many plug-ins and add ons can and will do that. Trust me when I say that I know, because we were experiencing it.

So what did we do?

Shawn and I sat down last night and played “Turn off and on.” It’s not as kinky as it sounds. We turned off every single plug in and one by one reactivated them to see which plug-ins slowed down or effected performance of 2phatgeeks the most and chucked ‘em. We then decided which plug-ins were essential to us. Obviously, we felt that several plug-ins aimed to commenter and commenting were absolute must, SEO plug-ins as well as one or two other plug ins to help with SEO. We kept the core group of plug-ins that seemed the most important to us as well as the main group of plug-ins almost everyone in the blogosphere appeared to recommend the most.

Everything else was deactivated and removed and then tidied up after.

• Take more time to consider what plug ins you really need as opposed to want.
• Compare what everyone is telling you what you need to have. Is there a plug in that shows up on nearly every list? Chances are, that’s a plug in you will need or should have.
• Don’t let yourself get overwhelmed by it all. There’s plenty of time to build yourself a blog that is kick ass. Take your time and don’t rush yourself.
• Don’t be afraid to ask your fellow bloggers if you truly feel lost. You’d be surprised how awesome and willing to help some of them are.

After running down the list and cutting away what we don’t need, we have noticed a significant rise in kick-ass speed and performance, and that’s something of a relief for us. There’s nothing that irks me more than a site that takes forever to load or get somewhere, I can’t imagine what first time visitors were feeling when they came to our site!

For those of you who may have experienced this, or something like it, how did you decide which plug-ins were an absolute must and which ones weren’t? Are there any plug-ins you believe is an absolute-must-have for any blog owner?

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