If you are new to WordPress platform, then you might have come across the term “WordPress plugins” & probably wondering what they are & how to use those.
I was very much confused when I first heard about plugins after I migrated from Google’s Blogger.com to WordPress.
When I came to know that the industry leading websites of Tech niche are all running on WordPress platform, I was amazed & started observing those websites’ functionality, features, user interface, permalink structure & performance. I was excited to start implementing those on my site to change the look, implement SEO & improve the performance of my website. I didn’t know that there is a thing called ‘plugins’ that exists right on the shoulders of WordPress.
Ever since I started blogging, I learned everything on trial & error basis, I have no guidance or help at that time. With great difficulty I migrated my website from blogger to WordPress, all alone by myself. & When I was thinking, That’s it ! Everything’s in the right place, I saw the option “Plugins” in dashboard. Started reading about plugins while my mind is filled with confusion & fear. I initially felt I did a mistake by migrating to WordPress. Though I didn’t monetize my site by that time, I was having a decent traffic of around 8,000 to 10,000-page views per month. So, it’s obvious for a newbie like me to panic that I may lose my visitors.
I’ve gone through a lot of articles online to get an idea about what are WordPress plugins, how to install, use them & how to choose best plugins as per our requirements. Later, over the time, I became familiar with various plugins & with experience – my knowledge increased. Through this article I want to help new bloggers by providing all the necessary information on plugins, and also everything I learned in an easy way without talking about big stuff like coding.
What is a WordPress Plugin?
Plugins are tiny software codes developed to integrate with WordPress platform. They are an important part of WordPress ecosystem. Plugins add additional functionality and features to WordPress that are not available by default and makes your website better.
What a plugin can do?
A plugin on WordPress is similar to extensions on a web browser or Apps on a smartphone. Just like the extensions on chrome browser provides additional features which are not part of the browser’s default functionality, Plugins on WordPress provide additional features which are not available by default WordPress feature set.
For Instance, handling spam comments automatically is not a inbuilt feature in WordPress. We have no inbuilt option to scan and detect spam comments in real-time. But by installing a plugin called “Askimet” we can get this functionality on our WordPress website.
WordPress was developed in such a way that any developer can write code and develop their own plugins and those plugins seamlessly integrate with WordPress platform & works without any issues.
So, if you are not able to find the option for the feature you are looking for, then there will always be a plugin available for that.
But if you have a really unique requirement that no one else has ever thought before & if there isn’t a plugin available for that (which is one in a million case), you can still develop your own plugin on WordPress if you have coding knowledge. Of-course this is for advanced users.
Why to use plugins in WordPress?
Using the plugins, you can build any type of website you want. Be it a podcast site or an ecommerce website or a photography blog or a simple personal blog. But plugins do more than that. WordPress plugins can be used to
- Enhance the security for your website
- Improve SEO
- Protect from spam comments
- Improve website UI & functionality
- Add social network sharing buttons
- Protect your content
- Backup your website automatically
- Add contact forms
- Start an Ecommerce website
- Customize the look of your website & much more.
Where can I find & Install WordPress plugins
WordPress plugins are available in WordPress.org Plugin directory. This is Similar to Play Store for Android and Webstore for Chrome extensions.
Over 55,700 plugins are available in the plugin directory as of now. We have both free & premium plugins available for WordPress. Free plugins are usually developed by individual developers & through GitHub, while premium plugins are developed and sold by developers, companies & organizations.
Free plugins handle the tasks effectively most of the times. Unless you have a large website with huge traffic with heavy needs, you don’t need to consider paying for premium features in plugins.
Installing a plugin in WordPress:
There are 2 ways to get a plugin.
1. Using WordPress dashboard, find & install plugin directly
You can find and install the plugins using the Plugin section in WordPress Dashboard.
- Go to WordPress Dashboard > Go to Plugins > Add New
- You can search for the plugin using the search box on the top right corner.
- Click on “Install” button available on the plugin page (as shown in the image)
2. Downloading from Plugin directory & installing in WordPress
You can find the free plugins by visiting plugin directory in wordpress.org & click on the download button to save a offline copy of it as a zip file.
- Go to WordPress Dashboard > Plugins > Add New,
- Click on the “Upload Plugin” option to browse & select the zip file you saved earlier.
- After successfully uploading it, click on install & activate the plugin.
Things to remember before installing a WordPress plugin
There are a couple of factors you need to consider before installing a plugin. Don’t install too many plugins as it may affect your site performance by effecting the loading speed. You will know more about loading speed effect on site performance and SEO in future articles. I’ll update the link here once the article is written.
- Install a plugin only if it’s from a reliable source. (WordPress Plugin Directory)
- Check the developer credibility.
- Check the description, reviews & ratings for the plugin in plugin directory. These details help us to decide whether to install the plugin or not.
- Check if the plugin is compatible with your installed WordPress version.
- Never install nulled plugins. There is a chance that premium plugins shared for free in Facebook groups, 3rd party download & pirate websites are probably nulled. Means there is a change that the plugin code is being tampered, may contain malicious code that can be used to hack or effect your website with malware or even worse.
- Say “NO” to outdated plugins. When you have to choose between two similar plugins, choose the one that is mostly recently updated. Don’t install outdated plugins as they may be incompatible with your WordPress or and there is a chance of security risk.
- Always keep in mind, Plugins increase the page load time. So, install only needed plugins & always delete the unused plugins from your WordPress dashboard.
Wrapping up…!
A plugin holds so much power that it not only can improve your website functionality & performance but it can also destroy it. So please be careful while choosing the plugins, remember the points mentioned above while choosing a plugin.
Too much of anything can be bad, install only the plugins that are needed, as the increasing number of installed plugins can affect the website performance.
Always update your WordPress & plugins to latest version
Final words
I hope now you got some idea and bit of knowledge about plugins after reading this article. If you learned something new, please leave a comment and let me know, it motivates me to write more useful articles.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Happy Blogging :)
Thats informative but it can be more ellaborate about security related wordpress plugins.