Minimise Your Risk by Cutting Out Website Plug-Ins
Published on June 4th, 2018
Minimise Your Risk by Cutting Out Website Plug-Ins
Website plug-ins are created by third parties. Installing them onto your website can help your business achieve certain efficiencies. These include:
- Enhanced functionality
- Cost savings from eliminating the need to custom-build functionality
- Speed to getting your site live
- Easy installations and for budding developers
But the more you exposure your website to these plug-ins, the more you expose your website to new risks.
Entry-level developers may choose to overload your new website with plug-ins to enhance the functionality of the site.
Although you shouldn’t cut them out entirely, we advise that you should minimise the use of them where you can. This is because website plug-ins can expose your website to increased risk. These risks include:
- Increased security risk
- Increased risk of cyber attacks
- Unknown plug-in developers
- Increased chance of plug-ins breaking when not updated properly
- Reduced website speeds due to plug-in loading times
- Inhibited scalability
We recently had a client ask us to urgently consult on why his website took a slow 11 seconds to load per page. The client’s website visitors were getting a terrible user experience and leaving in droves. An investigation revealed they had an astonishing 33 plug ins running at the same time.
How you can mitigate your risk.
Your website needs strong building foundations to scale for the future. And websites with plug-ins simply do not scale effectively. Websites built with heavy reliance on plug-ins are often known to break when plug-ins aren’t updated effectively. You can mitigate your risk by:
- Minimising the use of plug-ins where you can.
- Opting for custom-built solutions where possible.
- Checking ratings and reviews for plug-ins before you install them on your website. Are they build by a trustworthy source?
- Balance risk to your business by using a low skilled, cheap web designer and engage an experienced web developer.
- Ensure that your web designer/developer has the skills and knowledge to match your online business requirements.
How Webtron can help.
Rather than using pre-made themes, we custom-develop our websites. And we minimise the amount of plug-ins we use. Chat to the developers at Webtron about custom-built solutions that minimise the use of plug-ins.
