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I try to avoid plugins as much as possible. For anyone else that is hosted with SiteGround, are these beneficial to have?
I know for my WPEngine-based sites, some of them run into problems due to WPEngine’s “must-use plugins” which have conflicted with my themes and sometimes WooCommerce.
I’m just very hesitant for anything around caching and “optimization.”
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The optimizer plugin is decent. I’d still go with Wordfence for security though.
The sg-optimizer plugin was the fastest I’ve ever set up object caching (good performance improvement) on a WordPress site. Just be sure you turn memcached on too. Other optimization plugins do certain tasks better, but use sg-optimizer for at least memcached (object caching)
The siteground security plugin does the basics without the bloat, you can feel comfortable turning it on as well. If you find the need to look for another security plugin, be sure it provides a service the siteground security plugin does not (like alerting you of insecurities before a compromise) but IMHO leave the malware scanning up to the host not a PHP plugin*.
[ * Think about it, if a site gets hacked then the hackers can manipulate the security plugin to avoid detection from within the WordPress runtime; this is why malware scanning makes more sense at the hosting layer. Save yourself the headache and bloat caused by security plugins trying to do too much.]