How AI Reduces the Need for WordPress Plugins & Developers

In today’s digital landscape, artificial intelligence is transforming how websites are managed and optimized. At LELB Society, founded by Dr. Mohammad Hossein Hariri Asl, AI now plays a central role in automating tasks that previously required multiple WordPress plugins or even paid developers. This post explores how we’ve minimized plugin usage—currently relying on just three essential ones—thanks to strategic AI integration. Discover how you can streamline your own WordPress site, reduce costs, and increase performance with the right AI tools.

Video of How AI Reduces the Need for WordPress Plugins

Why Rely Less on WordPress Plugins?

While WordPress plugins offer convenient ways to add features, relying heavily on them can introduce significant risks and drawbacks. Each plugin adds extra code that can bloat your website, slowing down load times and negatively impacting user experience. More importantly, plugins—especially those not regularly updated or poorly coded—can create security vulnerabilities that hackers may exploit. Conflicts between multiple plugins are also common, causing errors or broken site functionality that can be difficult to troubleshoot. By minimizing plugin use, you reduce these risks, improve your site’s performance, and maintain a cleaner, more secure WordPress environment.

With only three carefully selected plugins installed on a lightweight GeneratePress theme, combined with the powerful optimization capabilities of Cloudflare CDN, LELB Society has achieved perfect Core Web Vitals scores on Google’s PageSpeed Insights—hitting 100% across the board. This is especially impressive given the scale and complexity of the site, which hosts over 4,500 English and Persian video lessons along with more than 8,500 user comments. The streamlined setup minimizes unnecessary code and resource loading, allowing the site to deliver fast, smooth, and responsive user experiences without compromising functionality or content richness.

This optimization success demonstrates how a minimalist, well-planned approach to WordPress management can outperform heavily plugin-dependent websites, even in demanding educational environments. By focusing on essential tools and leveraging technologies like Cloudflare’s global content delivery network, LELB Society maintains exceptional performance and scalability. The result is a site that not only meets Google’s stringent performance metrics but also ensures that learners around the world enjoy quick access to vast educational resources, reinforcing the importance of quality over quantity in website plugins and infrastructure.

How AI Can Replace Paid Plugins and Developers

First of all, let me make this clear: we are not suggesting that WordPress plugins are useless. Plugins provide valuable functionality and convenience, especially for complex needs or quick setups. However, with the increasing availability and sophistication of AI tools, it’s worth reconsidering the traditional approach of installing numerous plugins. By strategically leveraging AI, website owners can adopt a more economical and efficient approach, reducing dependency on costly plugins and external developers without sacrificing quality.

Strategic AI-Driven Development

As the founder of LELB Society, I, Dr. Mohammad Hossein Hariri Asl, carefully plan every website improvement, optimization, or new feature before implementation. Instead of immediately searching for plugins or hiring developers, I turn to AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. I provide these tools with detailed prompts describing the exact functionality I need, then engage in an iterative conversation with the AI to generate, test, and refine custom code tailored precisely to the site’s requirements. This method not only reduces costs but also delivers highly customized solutions that fit the unique needs of an educational website on WordPress like LELB Society.

Using AI Chat Logs to Refine Solutions

One of the biggest advantages of AI tools like ChatGPT is their ability to retain conversation history and code logs. This means I can revisit previous interactions to update, debug, or enhance the generated code without starting from scratch. This ongoing dialogue makes it easier to maintain and evolve the website’s functionality over time, ensuring that changes remain efficient and aligned with evolving goals. It’s a dynamic approach that contrasts sharply with the one-size-fits-all nature of many paid plugins.

Before the rise of AI, I often relied on forums like Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange to ask technical questions about WordPress optimization and maintenance. While these platforms were helpful, the interactions were usually slow and lacked the dynamic, back-and-forth nature of real-time support. I frequently had to wait hours—or even days—for responses, and follow-up questions were not always addressed. Today, with AI, I can engage in interactive, conversational problem-solving and receive accurate, context-aware answers almost instantly. This shift has dramatically improved both the speed and quality of my workflow in managing LELB Society.

LELB Society’s Real Example: Running on Just 3 Plugins

When I founded LELB Society on WordPress back in 2015, my limited knowledge and experience led me to rely heavily on plugins—sometimes using up to 30, even on a fresh installation. Like many beginners, I believed more plugins meant more functionality and a better site. However, over time, I learned that excessive plugin use often leads to slower performance, security vulnerabilities, and unnecessary complexity. After nearly a decade of committed work, research, and hands-on experimentation, I’ve refined and optimized the site’s infrastructure to the point where we now use only three essential plugins. For security purposes, I’ve chosen not to disclose the exact plugins we use on LELB Society, but the dramatic reduction speaks volumes about the power of experience—and now, artificial intelligence—to streamline web development.

Replacing WP-Members Plugin with AI-Powered Solutions

In the past, I relied on the WP-Members plugin to restrict access to premium content on LELB Society, which functions as a bilingual membership website offering English and Persian lessons. While the plugin was helpful, it added weight to the site and occasionally conflicted with other functionalities. I’m now thrilled to share that, with the assistance of AI—particularly tools like ChatGPT—I’ve successfully implemented custom content restriction features without using any plugin. By generating and refining PHP code through AI guidance, I’ve developed a lightweight, secure system tailored specifically to our site’s structure and user base, preserving full control over access while eliminating unnecessary dependencies.

As a membership-based educational platform with paywalled content, it’s also important to inform search engines about the restricted nature of our resources. With AI assistance, I’ve gone a step further by generating and integrating essential JSON-LD schema markup directly into our site’s code as listed below:

1. BlogPosting or Article
2. BreadcrumbList
3. Organization
4. DiscussionForumPosting
5. PaywalledContent

These structured data markups ensure that LELB Society complies with search engine best practices, helping crawlers understand our content model while maintaining transparency. All of this has been accomplished without hiring developers or using bulky SEO or membership plugins—just strategic use of AI.

Cutting-Edge Visual Dictionary and Interactive Learning at LELB Society

LELB Society features one of the most comprehensive visual dictionaries of advanced academic vocabulary worldwide, boasting over 2,800 carefully selected abstract and advanced words illustrated with images set in real-world contexts. To effectively depict such abstract concepts, I leverage powerful AI tools like ChatGPT, Sora, and Google’s Gemini Imagen. By providing these AI models with detailed textual descriptions, I am able to generate precise, meaningful visuals that bring complex vocabulary to life, helping learners better understand and retain challenging academic terms.

In addition to our visual dictionary, registered students enjoy asynchronous English learning through more than 120 Aesop’s fables. Each fable is accompanied by videos, vocabulary exercises, moral lessons, and thought-provoking discussion questions designed to deepen comprehension and engagement. To enrich this experience, I use AI tools like Sora to generate custom images for each fable. By submitting the text of a short story along with specific instructions, the AI produces vivid 16:9 aspect ratio illustrations that perfectly complement the lessons, creating an immersive and visually engaging learning environment.

Plugin-Free Features Achieved with AI Assistance

Thanks to AI tools, the following essential functions have been implemented on LELB Society without using any plugins. You can actually see all these features in action on the very post you are reading right now:

1. Showing related posts: Automatically suggests relevant articles to keep readers engaged.
2. Displaying related topics in bbPress: Highlights discussion topics connected to the current forum thread.
3. Breadcrumbs on top of each post: Provides easy navigation by showing the user’s path within the site.
4. Estimated reading time of each post: Displays how long it takes to read an article, enhancing user experience.
5. Post views: Tracks and shows how many times each post has been read.
6. Table of contents: Generates an organized outline for long posts, helping readers jump to sections quickly.
7. Author box at the end of each post: Introduces the article’s author with a brief bio and links. This is important because LELB Society functions like a wiki, supported by a dedicated team of 31 published authors, content developers, and teachers.
8. Embedding Google Forms: Uses lightweight Google Forms on the Contact page instead of bulky form-building plugins.
9. Adding YouTube video object schema: Enhances SEO by marking up embedded videos with structured data.
10. Best social share buttons: Adds optimized social sharing options without relying on external plugins.
11. Adding WhatsApp button: Integrates a direct WhatsApp contact button without any additional plugin.
12. Custom avatar for guest comments: Displays a unique avatar for guest commenters to personalize interactions.
13. Auto-linking tags in WordPress posts: Converts tags in posts into hyperlinks for a better user experience and lower bounce rate.

All these features showcase how AI assistance can replace the need for multiple plugins while maintaining full control and performance.

Streamlining User Access with AI-Powered Social Login Integration

Running a bilingual academy of English and Persian with around 300 registered students on a WordPress membership website, I’ve continually sought ways to streamline user experience—especially the login process. To reduce friction and enhance accessibility, I implemented a social login system that allows users to log in with a single click, eliminating the need for traditional usernames and passwords. Previously, I relied on the Nextend Social Login plugin to handle this functionality. While effective, it added extra weight to the site and introduced dependencies on third-party updates.

With the help of AI—particularly ChatGPT—I’ve now managed to implement Google social login entirely without relying on any plugins. This custom integration not only lightens the site’s backend but also offers more control over user authentication. Furthermore, new users who log in for the first time are automatically assigned the “pending” user role, and they must contact us for full registration to access restricted or paywalled content. These tailored functions, made possible through AI assistance, have significantly improved both our operational efficiency and user experience on LELB Society.

Showing a Welcome Message to Registered Students

To foster a stronger sense of belonging and social presence among our students at LELB Society, I’ve used AI assistance to generate a custom code snippet that displays a personalized welcome message followed by their displayed names to logged-in users at the top of our website. This subtle yet impactful feature helps create a more engaging and humanized online learning environment, making students feel acknowledged and connected within our asynchronous, bilingual community. By combining technical automation with thoughtful design, we’re enhancing the user experience while reinforcing our commitment to learner support and community building.

Enhancing Student Support with SEO-Friendly Live Chat Integration

At LELB Society, a bilingual academy of English and Persian with a strong emphasis on asynchronous learning, providing timely academic support to students is essential. To meet this need, we’ve implemented a live chat support system that allows students to connect with teachers at their convenience. However, many live chat solutions depend on external JavaScript, which can negatively impact SEO by increasing page load time and affecting crawlability. To resolve this issue, we’ve leveraged AI to lazyload our live chat system—ensuring it activates only after user interaction. This smart integration maintains our SEO performance while still delivering real-time support when students actually need it.

Top AI Tools That Can Streamline Your WordPress Site

Artificial intelligence has matured into an indispensable asset for modern WordPress website management. Instead of relying on dozens of plugins or hiring developers for every technical challenge, today’s AI tools can help automate content creation, optimize SEO, enhance security, and even generate code on demand. Some of the most effective AI tools that can streamline your WordPress workflow include OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, Google AI Studio, and Claude by Anthropic. Each offers unique capabilities that can reduce complexity, save time, and significantly lower operational costs.

OpenAI ChatGPT

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is one of the most versatile AI tools available today, especially for WordPress users looking to automate and enhance content creation. From generating blog post drafts and rewriting product descriptions to debugging code snippets or crafting custom shortcodes, ChatGPT can act like your personal AI assistant for nearly every aspect of running a website. It also helps with keyword research, writing meta descriptions, and simplifying complex topics—making it invaluable for content-driven sites like LELB Society.

Microsoft Copilot

Integrated into Microsoft 365 apps, Copilot extends AI support to your WordPress workflow through tools like Word, Excel, and Outlook. It’s especially helpful for managing content schedules, formatting long documents for web publishing, or analyzing user data exported from WordPress. Copilot also connects to GitHub for developers, allowing advanced users to write, debug, and implement custom WordPress functionality without the need for third-party plugins.

Google Gemini

Google Gemini is a powerful AI platform designed for deep integration with Google’s ecosystem. For WordPress admins, Gemini can be leveraged through Google Docs, Sheets, and SEO tools, assisting in everything from structured content planning to advanced data visualization. It also enhances keyword targeting and analytics by integrating with Google Search Console and Google Analytics, helping you make data-informed decisions without relying on bulky SEO plugins, like Yoast, Rank Math, and the like.

Google AI Studio

Google AI Studio offers a streamlined environment for training and deploying custom AI models. Although more technical, it can be extremely powerful for advanced WordPress users who want to personalize search engines, automate content moderation, or generate educational materials at scale. For platforms like LELB Society, it’s an excellent way to create intelligent, topic-specific learning tools without overloading your site with educational plugins.

Claude by Anthropic

Claude is an AI assistant developed by Anthropic with a strong emphasis on safety and contextual understanding. It’s particularly effective for educational content creators thanks to its ability to maintain coherent long-form conversations and respond with structured, accurate information. For WordPress, Claude can help with content generation, customer support automation, and drafting FAQs or academic material. Its alignment with responsible AI principles makes it a trustworthy choice for educators and content platforms alike.

Conclusion

In conclusion, as the founder and administrator of LELB Society, I feel a strong sense of responsibility to continually improve and optimize our WordPress-based educational platform. This ongoing commitment drives me to explore every possible enhancement that can enrich the learning experience for our bilingual community. To achieve this goal efficiently and intelligently, I consistently leverage AI tools—especially conversational AI like ChatGPT—to streamline processes, enhance functionality, and solve technical challenges. By embracing AI as a core part of my workflow, I ensure that LELB Society evolves with the times and continues to offer high-quality, accessible education to our growing community.