§ 17.06.2026 , 11-minute read

Plugin diet: 38 → 11 in 14 days

A worked example of cutting an enterprise WordPress install from 38 active plugins to 11, with every removed plugin's behaviour preserved in theme code.

§ Body

The essay

11-minute read

Of the 38 plugins on the Cyberhive install, 23 were under 200 lines of code each. Two more were duplicative. Three were tracking. The remaining ten owned data and stayed.

§ Adjacent

Next, previous

Same lane
← Previous Why your WP site lost 1.2 s to a plugin audit, and how to win it back. Next → WordPress and security: the four checks no plugin gives you
§ Related

Keep reading

3 more in this lane
01 17.06.2026 Why your WP site lost 1.2 s to a plugin audit, and how to win it back. A 9-minute teardown of the plugin tax. Includes the spreadsheet I use to score plugins on weight, render-blocking, and abandonment risk. Numbers from 47 live sites measured in 2026. 9 min · Performance, WordPress 02 17.06.2026 The caching stack I use in 2026 Cloudflare + WP Rocket + page-cache + object-cache. The order matters. The defaults don't. 10 min · Performance 03 17.06.2026 WordPress and security: the four checks no plugin gives you WordPress security plugins fix the surface that's already exposed. The four checks that prevent exposure in the first place. 8 min · Security, WordPress

Want this on your site? Currently booking new projects.

Start a project