The plugin ecosystem is one of Wordpress's most powerful features. Installing a particular plugin can add awesome functionality to your website quickly and easily, but Wordpress administrators should always proceed with caution when installing plugins on their important websites. Certain plugins can introduce security vulnerabilities or negatively impact performance. The combination of plugins should also be a concern. While some plugins may function perfectly on their own, using them in combination with certain other plugins can be detrimental to your website. For those reasons, while acknowledging how powerful the plugin ecosystem is, we encourage you to be judicious in your use of them. If you are experiencing performance issues with your site, reviewing what plugins you are using should be one of the first things you do.
Statistics and Traffic Tracking Plugins
The following statistics related plugins consume significant resources which can impact your website's performance and are not allowed. We recommend using the stats module in Automattic’s Jetpack or Google Analytics instead.
- counterize
- firestats
- gosquared-livestats
- newstatpress
- simple-stats
- statpress
- statpress-reloaded
- statpress-visitors
- stats
- track-that-stat
- visitor-stats-widget
- vsf-simple-stats
- wassup
- wp-postviews
- wp-slimstat
- wp-statistics
Backup Plugins
As Dollie already provides you with a robust automatic backups of all the sites on your account, we strongly discourage you from installing any backup plugins. They can bloat the footprint of your site, and impact your site's performance. These plugins can run their backup jobs at inopportune times, slowing down database queries and even resulting in timeouts on your site. Our backups are done in an efficiently and automatically, and the backed up data is stored securely and independently of your website.
The following list is not exhaustive; all non-incremental backups are not allowed:
- automatic-wordpress-backup
- backup
- backupbuddy
- backupcreator
- backup-db
- backup-to-dropbox
- backupwordpress
- backupwp
- dbc-backup
- pressbackup
- simple backup
- simple-wordpress-backup
- snapshot
- snapshot-backup
- the-codetree-backup
- total-archive-by-fotan
- total-backup
- updraft
- updraftplus
- vm-backups
- wordpress-backup
- wordpress-backup-to-dropbox
- wordpress-database-backup
- wp-complete-backup
- wp-db-backup
- wponlinebackup
- wp-s3-backups
- wp-time-machine
- xcloner-backup-and-restore
Database Plugins
Your website's database can be accessed in a number of ways including from the Dollie control panel. For more information see our article How can I connect to a website's database?. The following database related plugins are not allowed:
- adminer
- portable-phpmyadmin
- wp-database-optimizer
- wp-dbmanager
- wpdbspringclean
- wp-optimize
- wp-phpmyadmin
Caching Plugins
The Dollie platform tries to auto-detect the most popular WP caching plugins and auto implements container-level caching before WordPress is even loaded. By default your Wordpress sites will include the free Powered Cache plugin. For details on what alternative caching plugins are supported please see our article on What caching plugins can I use?
The following caching plugins are not allowed:
- cache-images
- db-cache-reloaded
- hyper-cache
- wp-file-cache
Firewall Plugins
The Dollie hosting environment is already hardened and secure. Keeping all of your plugins and themes up-to-date is usually the best way to keep your website secure.
The following firewall plugins have been found to break customer websites:
- AIOS - All in one security
Image Optimization Plugins
We do not allow server-based image optimization plugins or packages/software as these can consume significant resources and impact your site's performance. Where image optimisation is needed we recommend using a plugin that will delegate the image optimisation to a third party service such as the Imagify plugin.
Video Compression Plugins
We do not allow server-based video conversion and compression plugins or packages/software as these can consume significant resources and impact your site's performance. Where video compression is needed we recommend using a plugin that will delegate to a third party service such as the Cloudinary plugin.
Server & MySQL Thrashing Plugins
Certain plugins operate as tools to validate the integrity of your website, performing functions such as checking for broken links on your website. Unfortunately, the effect of these plugins is to add significant load to your website, which can impact its performance. Instead we recommend using external tools to perform such validation occasionally and not periodically. An example of such a tool is brokenlinkcheck.com. The following plugins are not allowed:
- broken-link-checker
- wp-postviews
- wordpress-popular-posts
- timthumb-vulnerability-scanner
- delete-all-comments
- exploit-scanner
Related Posts Plugins
Related post plugins are often extremely database intensive, increase the load on your website, and negatively effect its performance. To avoid placing additional load on your website, instead we recommend using a third party service such as Jetpack's Related Posts or Outbrain.
Nulled Plugins
Use of nulled plugins is not permitted. A nulled plugin is a copy of a premium plugin that has been modified to avoid paying for a license, and are not provided by the original creator of the plugin. Nulled plugins and themes often fail to provide the full functionality of the premium and can compromise the security of your entire website by containing backdoors and other malware.
Miscellaneous Plugins
The following plugins are also not allowed:
- backjacker
- google-sitemap-generator
- hcs-client
- repress
- search-unleashed
- sendpress email marketing
- smestorage-multi-cloud-files-p
- viberspy-pro
- wp-mailinglist
- wp-maintenance-mode
- xml-sitemap-feed