Wordpress Plugins NOT To Install

Everton | Dec 01, 2006 | Comments


Everyday there’s a new a post with ‘My Favourite Plugins’ etc, so I thought I’d be a bit different and create a list of the Wordpress plugins NOT to install.

Over, the last couple of weeks I’ve had a few big traffic spikes that have caused my Wordpress installation problems. Upgrading to the next highest tier with PowerVPS didn’t solve the problem, and even despite having 2 caches running, my site was slowing down and even shutting down at times.

I discovered that the cause of my problems were certain plugins, and after removing them my CPU load returned to manageable levels. Unfortunately, not before I’d missed out on a significant number of new readers.

Here are the plugins I’d recommend removing or disabling if your server is starting to strain:

The free translator plugin by the same developer that I was using was causing major problems for my server under load, so I spent $30 on the new premium version as it promised performance improvements. The premium Translator Plugin Pro did translate pages faster, but it still killed my server so I had to turn it off after 5 minutes. I haven’t had much joy getting my money back which is a shame…

UPDATE:  Angsuman very kindly took a look at my blog and optimised the plugin, as well as giving me many other useful tips.  I now thoroughly recommend this plugin.

Luckily I found the free Global Translator Plugin which does the same job without killing my server.

  • Gravatars

These plugins seem to be resource drains because they are constantly pinging the server to see if new images are available. Use with caution

Despite singing this plugins praises, under load it was causing me major problems. I think what was happening was that because of the high load my site was under, the list of posts generated by Readers Posts was constantly changing which meant that my APC/WP-Cache2 caching combo wasn’t working as every page load was unique.

I don’t know why, but this plugin was causing problems. Use with caution.

Are there any other plugins that have caused you problems, or do you have any performance tips you want to share?


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About the Author: Everton is based in London and has worked in the internet and mobile space for over ten years now, and before that worked in corporate strategy and consulting. He has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University.He also writes for Windows 7 News, Windows 8 News and One Tip A Day.

  • John Burton
    Angsuman’s Translator Plugin pro is such a mess. The whole plugin is down now as Google and Yahoo as started banning this plugin and don’t allow translations any more. Huge server overload and much translational errors. I filed support requests for more than a month but not yet got any response. The total company is a fraud and just taking money for bluff. No organization here, only some blogs and cheat plugins. If you see their forums you will find hundreds of people are unsatisfied and still unattended.

    Don’t buy it to get yourself fooled.

    For your Information, Google is banning blogs using this Angsuman’s Translator Plugin, since it sends automated queries to Google at a huge rate and thats a violation to Google’s webmasters guidelines.
  • the problems with angsuman's plugin seem to be quite common. Although I've got my version running a bit better, it's the first plugin I turn off when my server gets busy.
    It also suffers from Google blocking sites that do a lot of translations, although that's not Angsuman's fault but it is annoying when it happens to something you've paid for.
  • Angsuman’s Translator Plugin Pro has caused my webserver to crash few times a day. I've emailed Angsuman and still waiting for respond. Hopefully will fix the high load problem so I can continue to use this plugin.
  • I've had a similar experience ferenc. It increased the load on my server and I was forced to put WP-Cache. I've been informed that they are working on 5.0. I don't think I will be enabling it before that.
  • A TRULY NEGATIVE EXPERIENCE!!! WORST $30 EVER SPENT!!! ... some languages do not work at all.
    in my case ( http://ferenc.biz ) Arabic and Norwegian does not work - so they were removed.

    so much trouble with Google translation that I had to switch over to BabelFish due to getting a 403 Forbidden error for all translated pages from Google.
    Google viewed my frequent translation requests as spam but setting the Translator Cache to 12 hrs still has not fixed the issue.

    the plugin is $30 per blog!!!! PER BLOG!!! BE AWARE!!!!
    additional plugins are $25.

    the next version will include up to 32 languages per the manufacturer - http://blog.taragana.com - but that just sounds like more headache.

    I think they are pushing a product which is NOT finished and NOT ready to be released yet.

    a japanese friend of mine laughed her ass off at the translation. it is not even close to conversational level not to mention professional.

    I have been feeling like a spammer generating this sea of garbage content just to increase the size of my blog.
    for now I am removing it completely from my site until it becomes more reliable ... not holding my breath.
  • Angsuman - just spotted you've registered.

    Be careful enabling Object cache. Matthew turned it off at the weekend as it wasn't working well with APC:

    http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/2006/12/31/1...

    Good luck!
  • Angsuman - register on my blog and my blog and I'll give you temporary admin access. If you get it working can you put it in the sidebar where the current translator is please.
  • We used low end Intel Pentium (1.8 Ghz) running Fedora Core 4 and the Translator plugin in cache mode. The pages were not cached initially. If that is not good performance I don't know what is.

    That's why we are assured that we can make it work for you (free support). If we cannot I would happily and immediately refund you.
  • In our tests we could repeatedly run 50 simultaneous full site crawl on a big website with over 20,000 pages (copy of my blog) without delay with only 512 MB RAM. Cont...
  • Given that I did have problems literally the second I installed your plugin, can you explain why you won't refund my $30 even though I've asked on numerous occasions?
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