If you’re new to WordPress, you’ve probably come across the term “plugin” and wondered what it actually is.
Plugins – plugins – are a fundamental building block of WordPress and, by extension, every website.
Let’s take a closer look at what plugins are, what they’re good for, and how to choose the right ones.
What is a plugin
According to Wikipedia, a plugin is a plugin that does not work on its own, but as an additional module of another application, thus extending its functionality. It is a neologism created from the English verb to plug in – to plug in.
In the context of WordPress, then, plugins are pieces of software that extend the functionality of a site. So you might have a plugin to accelerate your site, a plugin to secure it, back up it, SEO it, and so on.
What is the goal of the plugin?
The goal of the plugin is to extend the functionality of the site in a meaningful way. The advantage for non-programmers is that with plugins, one can extend the functionality without having to know how to program or code.
Where to get plugins?
You can get free plugins directly from the WordPress repository.
However, you can also access the repository directly from your WordPress site, from which you can also search for plugins directly.
You can then use the free plugins (which are all the ones in the repository) without paying anything. However, it is likely that the plugins will have premium features that you will be able to access for a fee.
But you don’t have to worry about free plugins not being good Free plugins are just as good as plugins that cost money, they just do less.
Paid plugins and custom plugins
Premium versions of plugins can normally be purchased directly from the plugin pages. With that said, you then upload the plugins via the upload plugin option and activate them with a license key – or, more often than not, the plugins already have the license key in them.
Then you can also have a programmer write the premium plugins, or purchase it from a marketplace such as Codecanyon. However, if you don’t fully understand WordPress yet, I highly recommend only reaching for plugins from the repository or premium versions of these plugins.
How to choose the right plugin and what to look out for?
With any plugin you put on your site, you should always carefully consider two criteria:
- Utility
- Rating
In general, the fewer plugins on a site, the better. A large number of plugins can slow down the site, especially if you have multiple plugins with similar functionality, makes the site cluttered, carries more security risk, and is less sustainable.This is why you should think carefully about installing each additional plugin.
Utility
This criterion should be considered primarily from the perspective of the visitor’s experience, not yours. Various plugins for animations, effects, analytics dashboards directly into WordPress… These are all things that you may want on your site, but the visitor doesn’t get any extra benefit from. That’s why I highly recommend avoiding them.
Rating
Every plugin in the repository has a rating. For example, the Elementor plugin has a rating of 4.5 stars based on 6334 ratings.
You can see other useful information:
- over 5 million active installs
- last update 2 weeks ago
Bottom line, this plugin is widely used, popular and regularly updated. Feel free to install it on your site (if you need it).
In general, the better the rating, more installs and more frequent updates, the better.
What are the best WordPress plugins?
Back. Extremely depends on what kind of project you have and what you need plugins for, what you expect from them. However, if you have a classic presentation site, you can check out the article best WordPress plugins, where my most popular plugins are introduced and discussed.
Do plugins slow down the site?
Technically, no. It always depends on what a given plugin does and how it is programmed and coded. However, if you’re rather looking around in the WordPress world, it’s useful to stick to the rule that the fewer plugins the better.In fact, the moment you choose multiple heavy-duty plugins – or plugins that overlap in functionality (for example, two builders on one site), you can easily find that your site slows down extremely.
How to install, activate and update the plugin
To install the plugin, simply click the Install button in the repository.
Once installed, you can click the “Activate” button to activate the plugin at the same place.
You can then make plugin updates in Plugins -> Plugin Overview, with the option to either enable automatic updates (you will find this option in the top right corner of each plugin) or update plugins manually, with this option always appearing under the plugin as soon as an update is available.
I don’t recommend turning on automatic updates for plugins that have the potential to crash your site (such as caching plugin, builder, etc). However, for small plugins, such as SEO, I usually enable automatic updates.
The main thing, however, is to update regularly. Updates are not just about new features, but also about plugging security holes, optimizations, etc.
Word in conclusion
Plugins are a great servant, but a bad master.
After reading this article, I believe you will have a good idea of what plugins are, what they are for, and how to choose them.
Personally, from experience, I can also highly recommend keeping their quantity as low as possible. Which can be achieved by simply adding really only plugins with great added value for the visitors – not for oneself.
Let me know in the comments then too, what plugins do you like best? And how do you approach the amount of them on your site?
