A Users Guide to WordPress Plugins
According to usage statistics, WordPress accounts for the largest growing percentage of websites over the last few years from the top ten million sites in the world. With more than 60 million (and counting) total WordPress sites online today, it doesn’t take much to understand why WordPress is so popular. It owes much of its success to the use of plugins. Without them, WordPress as a platform would be but a shadow of what it is today.
What are WordPress Plugins?
Like any content management system (“CMS”), WordPress has limited innate capacities. Designing a platform to do everything would be impractical if not impossible. That’s where plugins come in. In the simplest terms, plugins allow WordPress developers to extend WordPress blogs well beyond standard capabilities. While WordPress has no innate functionality for many of the common features that are all but necessary to run a modern site, plugins enable developers a high degree of customization that allow WordPress to be as ubiquitous as it is.
Today, the official WordPress plugin library contains more than 27,000 plugins, with half a billion downloads. While some of these plugins are functionally redundant, many offer highly customizable functionality that allows a WordPress developer to have their site serve very specific needs.
At this stage in WordPress’ history, there’s a plugin for just about anything you can imagine. This includes everything from on-site widgets and custom navigation to Search Engine Optimization (“SEO”) enhancement and social media integration. Of course there may be no better way to understand WordPress plugins than to examine a few of the more popular ones.
All in One SEO Pack
With more than 16 million downloads to date, All in One SEO Pack offers exactly what the name suggests—a total SEO package. Its easily one of the most useful behind-the-scenes plugins for any serious blogger by offering:
Innate support for Google Analytics
Cryptographic nonce security
Custom SEO-oriented post types
If you’re less experienced in SEO but still want to use many of the best SEO practices, All in One SEO Pack goes a long way towards giving a beginner a hand.
Akismet
While blogging is often about creating a community that encourages participation and discussion, more often than not, opening up a forum also means opening the floodgates to unwanted spam. That’s where Akismet comes in. Essentially, this plugin does a simple check of posted comments against Akismet’s own spam database to flag potentially harmful comments and prevent them from being posted.
With deep customization options, Akismet offers all the control and power of having a full time moderation staff with none of the costs. It can show you which comments were caught, which were approved, and even a complete history of every comment it has ever blocked.
WooCommerce
Nearing two million downloads to date, WooCommerce is a relatively simple plugin that can turn your WordPress page into a full-fledged online store. With detailed sales information, comprehensive payment gateway integration, and a robust variety of shipping options, WooCommerce offers for free what many expect would be a monthly fee. And if your ecommerce needs go beyond the bare essentials, like many plugins, WooCommerce allows users to pay for a plugin add-on that can drastically extend functionality.
Where Can You Get WordPress Plugins?
You can search for plugins by heading to your WordPress dashboard and selecting the “plugins” option from the dashboard menu. Whatever it is you want to do with your site from putting in a new photo gallery to engaging automated data backups, odds are there’s an existing plugin in the WordPress library that can do exactly what you desire. Furthermore, nearly all plugins are free with the remainder almost always being relatively inexpensive.
Endertech is a Los Angeles WordPress Developer agency able to provide solutions for your WordPress and other web development needs. Contact us for your free consultation.