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Inactive Plugins and WordPress Performance – The Answer
Do inactive WordPress plugins slowdown performance? To the surprise of many, the answer to this age-old question is simply, No – at least, not directly.
While you may be surprised to discover the mountain of inactive WordPress plugins aren’t responsible for performance slowdowns, it makes sense when you understand how WordPress and visitor web browsers interact.
When your site is accessed, the end-users browser sends a request to your web server. The server responds to the request by sending your WordPress files to the end-user for download and rendering. The only files sent to the end-user are what’s needed to display your site, and nothing more.
Therefore, browser-server communication isn’t bogged down by transmitting a dozen inactive plugin files. However, this isn’t the end of the story.
Inactive plugins can potentially influence performance if your web server space is nearing capacity. While inactive plugins aren’t transmitted to end-users, they are stored on your server. This isn’t a problem for the majority of WordPress sites hosted on reputable and performance-oriented servers. However, if you use a low-quality hosting provider, the added weight of inactive plugins could prove detrimental.
This being noted, if you server is so easily influenced by WordPress plugins, it’s time to make a change as this means the server is likely outdated and non-optimized.
Should You Delete Inactive Plugins Regardless of Impact?
The entire reason why you have the option to activate and deactivate plugins is to prevent constant deleting and re-installing. When deactivated, plugins are designed to silently wait in the background.
Ultimately, the decision to delete inactive WordPress plugins is up to you. Are you planning to use the plugin in the future? If so, keep it. Are you never going to use a plugin, or has a plugin proved incompatible with your theme and/or WordPress settings? If so, then deleting the plugin is recommended, even if it’s to de-clutter your Plugin Directory.
Do Inactive Plugins Slowdown WordPress?
No, inactive or deactivated plugins do not slow down WordPress. To understand that, let’s see how WordPress works behind the scenes.
Each time a user requests a page from your WordPress site, WordPress starts a loading process. During this process, it only loads active plugins installed on your website. All inactive plugins are totally ignored and are not loaded or even looked at.
Even if you have dozens of inactive plugins installed on your website, it would not affect the performance of your site or make it slow.
The only place where WordPress looks for the inactive plugins on your site is the ‘Plugins’ page itself. Even then, it only looks for plugin’s header file and does not load the plugins themselves.
If your WordPress site is slow, then inactive plugins are definitely not the reason. You may want to check out our ultimate step by step guide to speed up WordPress and boost performance.
Should I Delete Inactive Plugins in WordPress?
The reason why WordPress allows you to deactivate plugins instead of directly deleting them is because sometimes you may just want to switch off a plugin temporarily.
If you plan to use that plugin soon, and you fear that deleting the plugin will delete its settings, then you should keep it.
Otherwise, there is really no point in keeping the inactive plugins installed on your website. In fact, they can be quite problematic at times.
For example, whether or not you are using that plugin, WordPress will still show you updates for those plugins. This can be a bit annoying particularly if you have many regularly updated plugins installed on your site.
Inactive plugins can be harmless, but they are still executable files. In case of an hacking attempt, these files can get infected or can be used to install malware on your site. As a WordPress security precaution, you should delete any inactive plugins that you do not intend to use.
We hope this article helped answer your questions about deactivated WordPress plugins and deleting inactive plugins. You may also want to see our list of essential WordPress plugins that you should install on your site.
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