More plugins than a Deli bus has passengers

The rise in popularity of the plug and play website builders like Wordpress has spawned the inevitable legions of plugins to support and, er, make it pretty - from the useful to the downright unfriendly and tacky there's a plugin for everyone no matter what!

Anyone who has travelled India will know that your average Indian train, lorry or bus fills every available nook and cranny with passengers with scant regard to safety or comfort - an analogy not lost on a vast army of Wordpress "designers". The result? A poorly performing, extremely slow to load and obnoxious stew of "personal" taste.

Facebook sets example of bad usability

Recently the mighty Facebook has fallen into the trap of bad user interface design with it's much moaned about update. Suddenly the platform has become rather troublesome, slow, glitchy and well just ignorant of its user experience. Just when you thought you knew how to use it - they change it for the worst!

Now Facebook is a serious website and Wordpress a hobbyist tool so that's where the comparison ends but as far as usability goes it seems they both score very badly choosing "effects" over the user experience.

Is it a website or just Puff Daddy?

If the King of Bling swapped careers to the world of website design you can bet that it'd have almost the entire trillion plugin catalogue assembled like a vast army guarding the gates of his website preventing visitors from exploring it.

For those standing on the brink of plugin abuse here's a checklist:

1. Do you really need it?
2. Does it serve any purpose to the visitor?
3. Will it slow my site down?
4. Do I even know who built it?

Point 4 is a big one! How often do you leave your front door open when you go on holiday? The same rules apply here - there are thousands of plugins to choose from and building them ranges from very, very easy to very, very complex. Likewise you get good developers and you get bad developers.

Much the same as strangers wandering about the street - you get good people, you get bad people. The good people see your front door open and walk by (or report it). The bad however nip in and help themselves to all your stuff, crap on the carpet and spray on the walls... now do you understand about plugins?

Naturally many companies use plugins rather than employ professional developers. They are cheap, easy to instal and in some cases enhance the experience but in many cases they are badly built, not malicious, just badly built causing your site to grind to a halt but in a few cases they are down right malicious.

Malicious plugins are used to spread virus, steel customer details, infect client machines and much more. Essentially installing a plugin hands over your house keys to a stranger so when your family pop over for a cup of tea (a visitor to your website) they are met with something very unsavoury indeed!

Beware the Black Hat!

Recently an SEO plugin for Wordpress has been blacklisted under the Google terms & conditions for so called "Black Hat" SEO techniques.

The plugin thought to have been used in upwards of 750,000 websites has in effect made them simply vanish.

Because the developers of the hostile SEO tool are unsigned and independent of Wordpress there's not much hope of the owners realising what's happened until they are out of business. Then of course it's too late but serves as an example of why when you trust your entire livelihood, your business and everything in it to a dodgy company you are rather playing Russian roulette.

But don't panic just yet - there are many reputable companies out there reselling Wordpress and other off the shelf websites but if you want a more bespoke finish, a more performance geared super car of a website - you just found us!

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