This section explains deleted or disabled plugins.
When you delete or disable a plugin from your WordPress instance, its functionality—and any associated settings or data stored in the WordPress database—will no longer affect your WordPress site.
Deleting a Plugin
When you delete a plugin in WordPress, the plugin’s files and folders are completely removed from the server. This helps free up disk space and reduce your site’s footprint. However, deleting a plugin does not necessarily remove the database entries created by that plugin. These typically need to be cleaned up manually to optimize the database.
Deactivating a Plugin
When you deactivate a plugin, it is no longer active and its functionality is disabled. However, the plugin’s files and folders remain on the server. This is useful if you want to temporarily disable a plugin to test whether it resolves an issue on your site, or if you might want to reactivate it later.
Shifter and Plugins
Since Shifter generates a static version of your WordPress site, plugins are only relevant when the WordPress instance is running and the static site is being generated. Because the static site consists solely of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, WordPress plugins do not exist on the generated static site itself.
It is important to understand how to manage plugins in a Shifter environment.
- Impact on Static Sites: Certain plugins (e.g., security, performance, and SEO plugins) may affect how the static site is generated or the site’s content itself.
- Dynamic Features: On static sites, many dynamic features provided by WordPress plugins—such as comment forms, contact forms, and search functions—will not work. For these features, you’ll need to use external services or JavaScript-based solutions instead.
- WordPress Instance Size: Having too many installed plugins—whether active or not—can increase the size of your WordPress instance and potentially affect site build times.
Considerations
- Removing Unused Plugins: We strongly recommend removing any plugins that are not in use on your WordPress instance. This helps keep your instance clean and reduces potential security risks.
- Plugin Conflicts: Deactivating plugins can help you troubleshoot issues caused by conflicts with other plugins or themes.
- Shifter Workflow: When using Shifter, you must generate a new static site every time you make changes to plugins that affect your site’s behavior.
In summary, managing WordPress plugins in a Shifter environment is important both for the static site generation process and for the functionality you expect from the generated static site.