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RosalindGardner.com

Learn Blogging & Affiliate Marketing with Rosalind Gardner

Blog Bloat? Pull that Plugin!

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The other day, I was chatting with my friend Michael Lovitch (Hypnosis Network – their Productivity & Engineering procrastination-solving product is amazing BTW, I can't believe how much I've accomplished so far this year!!!) — and he was mentioning how his company uses WordPress, but has had the backend completely redesigned to minimize the relentless program calls and speed up the software.

That reminded me that the WordPress installation on this site (and only this site – 101Date.com and the others are fine) had been running notoriously slow for awhile and I still needed to figure out the cause.

Now I didn't think it had anything to do with the fact that I have:

  • 865 Posts
  • 48 Posts in Draft
  • 9 Pages
  • 35 Categories
  • 291 Tags
  • 3,657 Approved Comments
  • or 3 Zillion Spam comments removed.

No, my thoughts went immediately to the plugins for some reason.

And lo and behold, there she was… ShareThis, still activated after I'd removed the code from the Loop and replaced her months ago with the AddThis bookmarking tool (in the second horizontal navigation bar).

And sure enough, when I deactivated and removed the ShareThis plugin (you should delete plugins that you don't use) … no more waiting years to get an Add New Post page to open.

Hurray!

So… do you know any more plugins that cause blog bloat? Leave your comments below!

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Comments

  1. Hello! Ros
    Your tip is really great and and your blog is very interesting.
    Good Day

  2. Hi Ros,

    Great tip. I went and checked my blog and found 7 plug ins that I wasn’t using anymore… and now they are deleted.

    Thanks again

    David

    • Hi BJ,

      Currently, my favorite plugins are Featured Content Gallery and Akismet. Everything else is pretty much handled nowadays by WordPress widgets and what isn’t, I hardcode into the theme.

      Cheers,
      Ros

  4. Hey, Ros. Thanks for pointing that out. I am currently using ShareThis on Blippitt (formerly Monty’s Mega Marketing).

    I had no idea about that issue. I’m not sure that I even notice it on my blog but I’m going to go check out “Add This” now anyway, just to be sure.

    Chris Monty

  5. The problem is that some of those plugins are just so cool. Alright, I’m guitly of at least 3 or 4 blogs with way too many plugins, maybe I could go through this weekend and trim out some of the less necessary ones. Still love my WP plugins though 🙂

  6. Rosalind, I have spoke with GST today and Clickbank and apparently you and anyone else who sells a product through clickbank is considered a Wholesaler, meaning your only customer is Clickbank, not all the people who buy your ebook.. though in theory they are but on paper they arent.

    At the time of purchase your product is being resold by clickbank at a suggested retail price, but clickbank is getting it at a wholesale price i.e reason they take a portion of the money.

    Now because clickbank is USA based, they would be classed GST Zero rated. Just like if you work with any USA based companies doing affiliate work, its Zero rated. Meaning the income still is taxable but.. you would not have to charge GST to usa based companies.

    Clickbank is usa based and you are their wholesaler with super affiliate handbook. Thus its not your concern about people who buy your book being charged GST.

    Now if you went through paypal or another place, yes you would then have to charge GST but because your wholesaling through clickbank to clickbank.. you dont have to worry about collecting GST from clickbank as they are usa and you dont have to collect GST from anyone who purchases your ebook because they are essentially clickbanks customers not yours. That is why clickbank says they collect taxes and submit.

    Hope that helps.

  7. Hi

    I chatted with clickbank and they said

    They collect all taxes, yet I dont see them collecting GST, so I have feeling they are not doing GST which would mean it would be left to Canadian business to do it which is hard if you cant setup tax to apply in the account, it would mean taking a portion of the clickbank check that comes through every 2 weeks and taking out 5% of it

    What is 4.66 factor vs 5%?

  8. not sure about that.. but I use heaps of plugins and I am doing okay with my performance and hosting..

    for me, once I hit 100k UV, i will switch to at least VPS, or possibly Dedicated because shared hosting are pretty slow IMO.

    just my 2 cents

  9. Rosalind you are a fellow canadian who has made good money from selling your ebook through click bank

    I was chatting to the GST department today in regards to intangible products and they informed me if a business earns over $30,000 in 4 quarters regardless of where that income is form i.e usa, canada, uk, australia

    They should be charging 5% GST on all ebooks, membership services, software etc.. each time a Canadian customer buys and downloads

    But when I go to buy yours through clickbank, I see no GST added, are you collecting GST differently? like taking out a small portion from your overall sales due to clickbank not providing a means of letting you add a tax?

    I mean you would be registered for a GST number right based on your income?

    • Hello Mark,

      I have recenlty had lengthy conversations with Revenue Canada and do indeed file and pay GST on commissions earned from Canadian merchants… and will have more to say about THAT issue pretty soon.

      As regards Clickbank – because we can’t add GST to the price without setting up a different site specifically for Canadians,you have to deduct the GST from the purchases made by Canadians. Don’t forget to use the 4.66 factor, as opposed to just taking off 5%. 🙂

      Hope that helps.

      Cheers,
      Ros

  10. Digg-Digg plug-in slowed the load time on my blogs to a crawl, so I deactivated it. Hated to, I liked having the buttons, but it’s always a balancing act.

  11. Hey Ros,

    Great post…out of interest how many plugins would you consider “bloat”. 5? 10?

    Also thanks for that link to the Productivity product.

    M

    • Hi Matt,

      Bloat only comes from those that blog down the workings – although I’m down to using around 10 plugins on this blog. In many cases, I’ll simply hard code what a plugin will do – just to avoid the call.

      Cheers,
      Ros

    • Matt,

      That depends on how the plugin was coded. So the old trial and error (or time test) method would be the only cure

  12. I’m not really technically minded but I also discovered that if I wasn’t using a plugin that not only should i deactivate it but also remove it completely out of my directory.

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