How Many System Config Options Is Too Much

Question

I'm rebuilding a theme. The current one I'm replacing has over 400 options in the system configuration options. I do realise that 400 is ridiculous, but I always make use of system config in my own themes.

My question; how much is too much? I'm thinking of this especially from a performance perspective, are the system config variables cached? I realise also that this is open to opinion. Thanks.

Answer 1

Very open to opinion as you mentioned. The only aspect of your question that I can answer is yes, the config variables are indeed cached.

Answer 2

From a technical point of view the amount is not really relevant. There is little to no performance impact when using them.

The question is; is it usable for the admin and how relevant are these options. Styling should be done through CSS. It might be a better option to create several styles that a user can choose from or create a Magento extension that creates a CSS file when the values are saved. This way there's no need for a lot of inline styles rendered from the sys/config section and the CSS file can be compressed.