How many plugins are too many?

There's no magic number. Ten well-coded plugins can outperform five poorly-coded ones. What matters is whether each plugin is necessary, maintained, and loading its assets selectively. That said, if you're over 20-25 active plugins, it's worth a hard look at what each one actually does.

Will a caching plugin fix my slow site?

Caching helps, but it treats a symptom, not the cause. If your site generates a slow page, caching serves that slow page faster — but the underlying problems are still there. Fix the root issues first. Cache what's left.

Does WordPress get slower as it gets older?

WordPress itself doesn't degrade, but the environment around it does. Database bloat accumulates. Plugins get heavier. Hosting infrastructure ages. Without active maintenance, the trend is toward slower. That's not inevitable — it's just what happens when nobody's watching.

Can I fix this myself?

Some of it, yes. Image compression and plugin audits are things most site owners can do without a developer. Hosting migrations, server-level caching, and page builder cleanup usually benefit from someone who knows what they're looking at. Doing it wrong can break things that were working.

How fast should my WordPress site be?

Google's Core Web Vitals set the bar: Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint under 200ms, Cumulative Layout Shift under 0.1. Those are thresholds, not goals. Aim for scores that give you margin — a site sitting at exactly 2.5s is one bad plugin update away from failing.