{"id":235,"date":"2009-03-14T23:45:35","date_gmt":"2009-03-14T18:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/?p=235"},"modified":"2009-03-14T23:45:35","modified_gmt":"2009-03-14T18:15:35","slug":"wordpress-plugin-killer-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/wordpress-plugin-killer-series\/","title":{"rendered":"WordPress Plugin Killer: The Series"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"WordPress<\/p>\n

My last post<\/a> about using a bit of custom PHP code in the wordpress template instead of installing a plugin inspired a new way of thinking for me. How many of the wordpress plugins currently in use are actually necessary? Couldn’t we avoid a few plugins by using a bit of custom code?<\/strong><\/p>\n

So I decided to do a series on how to duplicate the functionality of some plugins<\/strong> using PHP code within the WordPress theme\/template itself. That way, you can eliminate the plugin – and still get the features offered by the plugin.<\/p>\n

The Advantages<\/h2>\n

The advantages of avoiding unnecessary plugins…<\/p>\n

\n
Less overhead\/More Optimized Method<\/dt>\n
If you have installed a plugin, the plugin files must be read and loaded into the memory on every page load. This overhead can be avoided by using putting the code into the template file which is already in the include list.<\/dd>\n
Don’t have to worry about plugin updates<\/dt>\n
Granted, current WordPress version make it very easy to update plugins. But still, if you embed the code, then there is no need to update the code every month or so.<\/dd>\n
Much more customizable than the plugin<\/dt>\n
You can write the code to get the exact functionality you want. You cannot get that with a plugin.<\/dd>\n
You learn more about WordPress<\/dt>\n
This is perhaps the most important effect – you learn more about wordpress template tags, about PHP, about wordpress internals and lot more.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

The Disadvantages<\/h2>\n
\n
Not as easy as using a plugin<\/dt>\n
For those who work with WordPress and PHP code all the time, like myself, editing the code may be easier than finding, installing and configuring a new plugin. But for most normal people, using the plugin is a much easier option.<\/dd>\n
Have to be familiar with coding, PHP, FTP, etc.<\/dt>\n
To do custom coding, you have to be familiar with technologies like PHP, HTML, FTP uploading etc. If you are not familiar with these, you will have to put in a bit of time to learn it.<\/dd>\n
Changing the theme involves a lot of work.<\/dt>\n
You will have to port all the changes you made in your old theme to the new theme whenever you decide to move to the a theme. The more you customize a theme, the more time you have to spent when moving to a new theme.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

Plugin Killer Series<\/h2>\n

With this in mind, I have decided to create a series that shows how to ‘kill’ some unnecessary wordpress plugins. You will be able to get the same functionality by using the custom code in your template files.<\/p>\n

The first post in this series is already done – it is the ‘Avoid Duplicate Content – Use Canonical URL in WordPress<\/a>‘ where I showed how to create the same functionality as the Canonical plugin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More to follow. If you are interested in these posts, make sure you have subscribed to Bin-Blog Feed<\/a> – if you have not done so already.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My last post<\/a> about using a bit of custom PHP code in the wordpress template instead of installing a plugin inspired a new way of thinking for me. How many of the wordpress plugins currently in use are actually necessary? Couldn’t we avoid a few plugins by using a bit of custom code?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,21,31],"tags":[212,213,251,304],"class_list":["post-235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-php","category-wordpress","tag-plugin","tag-plugin-killer","tag-series","tag-wordpress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bin-co.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}