Default plugin load order question/suggestion

The plugins are sorted in the order that they will be loaded. Part of the functionality of this plugin is to change the load order of plugins so it shows you in what order they will be loaded. You can change this order by going to the plugin page and dragging and dropping them into the order you want. Doing this for cosmetic reasons probably isn’t a good idea.

Oh… I thought it was just cosmetics reasons.

So, say I have 3 plugins… A,B,C.

And without Plugin Organizer those plugins on the site’s frontend load in order of C,B,A.

When I change the save the order of the plugins list in the backend to A,B,C then they will load the same on the frontend of the site? Like in the sense of manipulating the order of http calls?

The order is how the code is loaded. The WordPress core pulls an array of active plugins from the database and starts with the first entry. In your example that would be A so it loads the php code for plugin A. Then it goes to the next plugin which would be B and loads it’s php code and so on. The way that the http calls are organized depends on how the plugin registers its hooks. Some plugins execute code as soon as they are loaded and others register functions with hooks.
The purpose of reordering the plugins was the original idea for me to create this plugin. I had 2 plugins that conflicted with each other if one was loaded before the other. So you can crash your site if you load one plugin before another. You can also fix plugin conflicts that can crash your site by loading one plugin before another. Hopefully that all makes sense.

Thanks Jeff!

Got it and understand.

Appreciate it.

It would be great if there was a way to actually know the optimal order for plugins on any given site. I have no idea what the order should be. Any tips?

Changing the order of the plugins shouldn’t give you any increase in load time. It is intended to fix problems with one plugin conflicting with another. So with the load order it is best to go with “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”.

Oh! I wish I knew that before I changed the order. Anyway, still no problems but, you are right, I didn’t notice any difference in load time.

Hi Jeff,

I just wanted to ask what is your main focus of this plugin then?

I think my focus has been totally different.

My focus has been what WordPress has always sucked at.

That is having a plugin conflict with another leaving a user/customer/webmaster to choose between one plugin or another. Your plugin allows me to not have that problem.

It also allows me to dramatically increase load performance.

I was hoping you release a premium version under this concept.

I’ve been able to include all the needed and cool plugins without having to compromise plugin conflicts and increase loading time by an insane amount.

My second focus now is optimizing the WordPress backend loading times. It is ridiculous that plugins load on every page when not needed. This is the problem and (to me) for the sake of WordPress performance of all should be mandatory for developers to avoid. You plugin allows me to include that standard. However, on the backend this is a lot more trick because of the shared urls like edit.php?variable-etc. Where that url can end up being a lot of different values.

Is any of this in the arena of what you were aiming to achieve with Plugin Organizer? It is the best plugin ever honestly because of what it fixes and allows, inspite of the conflicting hiccup that shouldn’t be. It allows expansion for me.

Merry Christmas Jeff!

The main focus of this plugin was to fix plugin conflicts and decrease page load times. The ability to disable a plugin when it isn’t needed on a page will decrease your load time and can fix a plugin conflict. Changing the order will only solve a plugin conflict and will have no impact on the load time. It is limited in what it can do with urls that have different arguments. This is because it has to work outside of wordpress and has to do a string match on the url.

Hey Jeff!

Cool. We are on the same page then and I understand the url arguments problem.

If I could dev I would massively help you out and contribute much as I could, but I just don’t dev.

Can I send suggestions? Here or somewhere else?

Soon, when I am done I am going to show you what I have built to showcase the concept of what you plugin has allowed me to really do. I think this is a game changing plugin.

You can make suggestions here. Just submit a new topic.