As of this date, there are more than 34,000 WordPress plugins, and it can be tempting to try all of them – beware of plugin overload!

Excessive use of plugins can slow down your website, and will surely increase maintenance as well. So use only the plugins you need.

Note that every plugin:

• has a different admin page.
• puts its menu in a different place – some plugins don’t even have menus!
• becomes a research project as you try to figure out how it works – this can be time consuming and also frustrating.

So, as I always recommend (very strongly), sketch out the architecture of your website and what plugins you’ll need to accomplish what you want to do. Then proceed to build your site, loading plugins one-by-one, getting familiar with how each works, and testing it. If it does the job and is not adversely impacting other elements of your site, you’re good to go!