Should you’re new to WordPress, you may end up questioning, “what’s a WordPress plugin?”. It’s a reasonably frequent query to ask as a result of, along with being one of many many new phrases that WordPress will introduce to your vocabulary, plugins are additionally a vital constructing block of each single WordPress website.

On this entry, we’ll reply the query of “what’s a WordPress plugin?”. Then, we’ll provide you with a couple of tips about the place you could find WordPress plugins and how one can handle them in your website.

What Is A WordPress Plugin And How Does It Work?

A WordPress plugin is basically a little bit of code that “plugs in” to your self-hosted WordPress website. In human phrases, meaning a WordPress plugin is one thing that provides new performance to your WordPress website or extends current performance in your website.

One of many advantages of WordPress is that enterprising builders have written tens of hundreds of WordPress plugins you could add to your website.

Plugins could make all the pieces from small tweaks to huge adjustments to your website. For instance, some plugins may even flip your WordPress website right into a totally functioning eCommerce retailer, social community, or discussion board.

Or, they will additionally add smaller options like an Instagram feed. Some WordPress plugins don’t even have front-facing results. For instance, you may set up plugins to enhance your website’s efficiency or assist it rank higher in engines like google like Google.

How Do Plugins Work?

You’ll study all of this in additional element under. However usually, to begin utilizing WordPress plugins in your website, you’ll have to:

• Discover a WordPress plugin that you just’re interested by
• Set up that plugin in your WordPress website
• Configure the plugin inside your WordPress dashboard

Trying to find WordPress plugins from inside your WordPress dashboard

Can You Use WordPress Plugins at WordPress.com?

For many customers, the reply is, “No”. You can not use WordPress plugins at WordPress.com – plugins are one thing that solely individuals who use self-hosted WordPress, AKA WordPress.org, can profit from.

Lately, Automattic barely tweaked this coverage by permitting WordPress.com Enterprise Plan customers to put in third-party plugins. However nonetheless, the common WordPress.com person can not set up their very own plugins.

Learn this submit for extra a extra detailed comparability of WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.

Discovering and Managing WordPress Plugins For Your Website

Now that you just’re in a position to reply the query of what’s a WordPress plugin, let’s transfer on to the place you could find WordPress plugins and how one can add them to your website.

The place to Discover WordPress Plugins

You will discover WordPress plugins in a couple of totally different locations, relying on whether or not you need free or premium plugins.

With free plugins, you may set up and use the plugin with out paying something, although typically sure options are locked until you pay cash.

Alternatively, premium plugins, clearly, price cash, however usually supply higher options because of this.

Listed here are a few of the finest locations to search out WordPress plugins:

• WordPress.org – the official WordPress plugin listing and among the finest locations to search out free WordPress plugins.
• Code Canyon – a big listing of solely premium WordPress plugins.
• Third-party builders – loads of builders solely promote plugins by means of their very own websites, so utilizing Google is commonly a great way to search out plugins.

A take a look at the WordPress.org plugin listing

You can too search the WordPress.org plugin listing immediately out of your WordPress dashboard by going to Plugins → Add New.

What To Contemplate Earlier than Putting in WordPress Plugins

As a result of putting in a WordPress plugin entails including third-party code to your WordPress website, you’ll want to watch out about which plugins you put in.

The mistaken plugin may:

• Trigger an error in your website
• Open an unintentional vulnerability that hurts your WordPress website’s safety
• Decelerate your website
• Deliberately introduce malicious code

To keep away from these issues:

• Attempt to use plugins from respected builders or directories (like WordPress.org or Code Canyon)
• Learn evaluations and examine how standard a plugin is earlier than putting in it
• Test for the final time a plugin was up to date to verify it’s nonetheless maintained

What to search for earlier than putting in a WordPress plugin

Whereas this strategy isn’t foolproof, it goes a protracted option to making certain you solely set up high quality WordPress plugins.

Set up a WordPress Plugin

There are a couple of alternative ways to put in WordPress plugins. For full directions, we advocate that you just learn our devoted submit on find out how to set up WordPress plugins.

More often than not, you may set up WordPress plugins immediately out of your WordPress dashboard.

Replace a WordPress Plugin

Updating your whole plugins is important to maintaining your website functioning and safe.

As with putting in WordPress plugins, you may often replace WordPress plugins immediately out of your WordPress dashboard. For extra data, learn our submit on find out how to manually replace WordPress plugins.

There are additionally methods to have your plugins mechanically replace, although it’s usually higher to manually replace plugins so that you’ve got extra management over when your updates occur.

Deactivate a WordPress Plugin

Simply as with putting in and updating a WordPress plugin, we even have a devoted submit on how one can deactivate and uninstall a WordPress plugin.

The method is straightforward and might be achieved totally from inside your WordPress dashboard.

Can You Have Too Many WordPress Plugins?

As you turn out to be extra acquainted with WordPress, you’ll in all probability see folks telling you to not set up too many WordPress plugins to be able to keep away from “slowing your website down.”

The concept that extra WordPress plugins equal a slower website isn’t technically true…nevertheless it’s nonetheless a helpful idea for rookies to remember.

See, what’s extra necessary than the uncooked variety of WordPress plugins is what every plugin does and the way effectively every plugin is coded.

However, as a newbie, you possible don’t have the coding data to evaluate the impression of every particular person plugin.

For that purpose, it’s nonetheless a good suggestion to solely set up plugins that you just actually want. That’s, don’t simply set up a plugin on a whim since you suppose it appears to be like cool. Attempt to maintain your plugin record to only the requirements!