themes and plugins best practices

  • Unknown's avatar
    trecoop · Member ·

    I’ve inherited maintenance of a few WP sites and have a few questions.

    1. Can we safely delete un-used themes? (i.e default wordpress themes)
    2. Is it okay to leave a theme outdated (ie. lapsed paid theme)? I.e. is the danger from not updating a theme more immediate (like stubbing your toe) or existential (like nuclear war)?
    3. How can we determine if plugins are actually in use/integral to the site? i.e. how to know if we can deactivate them without losing functionality?
    4. Is it okay to have many “deactivated” plugins, or should they be deleted? I’m guessing if they are deactivated, it’s a housekeeping issue.

    Any other advice for a novice?

    Thanks kindly!

  • Unknown's avatar
    compchris · Member ·

    Howdy trecoop,

    Let’s see here. It looks like you may be talking about self-hosted WordPress blogs. But just in case you’re on the Business plan, I’ll clarify for both cases.

    1. On WordPress.com, themes aren’t deleted. You’ll be able to change between them as you please. Self-hosted: Yep. You can safely delete unused themes with no adverse effects.
    2. Themes are automatically updated for you on WordPress.com. Otherwise, I’d absolutely keep them up-to-date. Updates not only fix bugs, but patch security holes.
    3. I’m personally a fan of keeping my list of plugins down to as few as possible. If you know what a plugin does, and you want to keep it… I’d say to go for it. If you don’t know, there’s no harm in disabling it. Check to see if anything has broken. If something is, re-enable it.
    4. If you aren’t going to use a plugin, delete it. If you need it again later, give it a reinstall.

    Do know that these are the WordPress.com forums, and support for the self-hosted solution is not provided here. If you’d like to know more about the differences, check out this support page. Support for self-hosted blogs is provided here . However, in this case, these answers largely apply to both users on the Business plan, and self-hosted blogs.

    If there’s something else I can help you with, let me know!

    ~Chris

  • Unknown's avatar
    gemmacevans · Member ·

    Hi trecoop,

    I’ve inherited maintenance of a few WP sites and have a few questions.

    What are the URLs of the sites you have inherited? If you let me know, I can check whether they are WordPress.org sites for you.

  • Unknown's avatar
    trecoop · Member ·

    Thanks a ton, Chris!

  • The topic ‘themes and plugins best practices’ is closed to new replies.