Whats too many add ons?

[billybatz9]

I was wondering about adding a few add-ons to my forum but was wondering...

Does adding more add ons make my website more vulnerable to threats?

How many addons do you have? And which are your communities favorites?

 

[Shelley]

Shouldn't be a threat if that specific add-on is developed correctly with security and quality control in mind by the developer. I currently have around 27 add-ons of which 19 of those are enabled.
Favourites are xenmoods, postratings and definitely showcase << which is a personal fav of mine.

 

[mistypants]

I don't know of any major add-ons here with security issues. If there are, and the add-on is supported by the developer, I'm sure they would patch it ASAP.

"Too many" add-ons, I think, varies from board to board. There are so many great, full featured add-ons available that it's really tempting to trick your board out with all the bells and whistles, but that's not always a smart move. You should make sure that the add-on serves an important purpose, is widely used on your boards, and fits in with the board's theme. For example, we use @xfrocks [bd] Medal (named 'Pins' on my Kingdom Hearts fan site, a reference to Disney collectible pins). Instead of offering them for just things like post count, we relate them to the community. To get one pin, users must be a guest on our podcast (every user can volunteer to guest star). For another, they need to complete our yearly Christmas trivia puzzle. Each of the pins' images and titles relate to the video game in some way. So we've found a way to make sure the add-on doesn't feel like an add-on: it's a defined cornerstone of the community. It's seamless. That's what we strive for.

 

[Alpha1]

1 addon can be too many if it is not coded well. 110 addons can be no problem if these are coded well.

 

[tajhay]

I have 90 odd addons enabled on my community and dont have any problems. As long as your server can handle them and ofcourse if there is value in having them turned on then its all good.

 

[billybatz9]

I have 90 odd addons enabled on my community and dont have any problems. As long as your server can handle them and ofcourse if there is value in having them turned on then its all good.

90 Wow

 

[Moshe1010]

add-ons are the devil.

 

[Sheratan]

An early sign of "Too many addon" is you had PHP memory_limit exceeded message in your error log.

 

[Live Free]

I would consider too many add-ons to be when the risk of security issues and performance suffrage becomes too high, or even when your community suffers from too much "feature bloat."

 

[Code Monkey]

It's not like every addon is loading on every page load. They are used at different times. So 90 addons isn't bad at all. Now if it were 90 addons that all specifically did something on forum home then that would probably be a problem.

 

[digitalpoint]

I have 50 (49 enabled) without any issues. But like others have said, it's really about the code quality. 1 crappy addon could wreck your site.

 

[Eoj Nawoh]

I know for us, we were on a host before and had 15 addons and our site moved at a snail pace, then we moved to a new host and we currently have 30 addons without any issues whatsoever.

Credits to @Mike Edge for that.

 

[DRE]

I have 70 addons installed and only 68 are active. The other two are disabled. I think too many addons is when you get to a point where troubleshooting an issue because cumbersome because you have to turn them all off and on and trouble shoot them when they clash with other addons. I think that's the point when it gets too many.

 

[Eoj Nawoh]

Quite honestly the number of addons doesn't matter if they're high quality and you have a decent host. I've only gotten more since moving to a VPS a few weeks ago.

 

[m3commish]

I have 70 addons installed and only 68 are active. The other two are disabled. I think too many addons is when you get to a point where troubleshooting an issue because cumbersome because you have to turn them all off and on and trouble shoot them when they clash with other addons. I think that's the point when it gets too many.

It would be cool if there was a way to 'check all' in the list of addons. This would eliminate a lot of unnecessary time checking/unchecking them one by one.

 

[m1ne]

It would be cool if there was a way to 'check all' in the list of addons. This would eliminate a lot of unnecessary time checking/unchecking them one by one.

XF 1.5 - Miscellaneous improvements

 

[m3commish]

Awesome @Solidus, 1.5 is looking good!

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Too many addons to me is when it becomes overwhelming to keep track of them all. I usually have a golden rule to have 10 or less. If I want to add a new one, I look for one that isn't used anymore, uninstall it and add the new one.