Wikipedia definition: Plugin-itis is an affliction causing a person to feel like they are going to be a better blogger if they have every plugin known to man on their blog.

Ok, I just made this up. There’s no Wikipedia definition. But the affliction is real. Go to Google, or Yahoo, or whatever your favorite search engine is. Type in the keyphrase “top 10 plugins”. I did it. I came up with more than 25 million results. Bloggers want something to write about. When you are stuck with nothing to write about, a Top-10 list always works as a filler. When you write about blogging, a Top 10 Plugin list is perfect.

These lists fool people into thinking that they must have all those plugins. Many people try them all – and have bad results.

The first danger to using too many plugins is that they can conflict with each other giving your blog gets conflicting messages. Your blog may work well for a while and then for no apparent reason it stops working, or you can’t get into the dashboard and you aren’t sure why.

The second danger to using too many plugins is that one may duplicate what one is already doing. Recently a blog owner used two different versions of a database backup plugin. She soon had a white page where her blog used to be.

The third danger is that a blog is built on a database, meaning that when you pull up a blog page that page has to be built. You can actually see this happening if you are on a slower internet connection. First the header shows up. Then the content, then the sidebar, then the background and footer. It comes together piece by piece. Plugins are also loaded one at a time. The more plugins you have, the more work has to be done to build this Web page. A websie visitor on a very slow internet connection may leave before the page finishes loading.

Here’s how to use those Top 10 Must-Have WordPress Plugin lists to your advantage.
1. Decide what functionality you want your blog to have. Do you want it to show your Twitter stream or have a direct link to your Facebook page? Do you want to block spam comments? Do you want it to automatically back up your database?

2. Once you know what you want the blog to do, do a Google search and find a plugin (more likely plugins) that does it. Then do a Google search and see what the bloggers are saying about the plugins that you are interested in. What are the pros and cons of using each one.

3. Go to the WordPress Extended Coded or the Plugin’s home page and read about it. Take a look at the screenshots. Does this look like what you want it to do? Does it look easy?

4. Make sure that the function isn’t already built into your blog or already built into a plugin that you are already using.

The fix: If your blog stops working for no apparent reason and you can’t get into the dashboard to deactivate your plugins, go into your FTP program and remove the plugins one at a time until the blog is working again. You can easily re-install and re-activate the ones that worked.

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