Plugins for WordPress are fantastic; they can do everything from speed up your site to boost your search engine rankings and facilitating the management of your membership base. Plugins facilitate the creation of complex websites by web designers and developers, making the process faster and (perhaps) more effective. There is no doubt that plugins are a vital part of the WordPress ecosystem, as evidenced by the fact that there are more than 20,000 WordPress Plugin and more than 330,000,000 downloads in the official WordPress plugin directory.
However, utilising WordPress plugins does come with certain drawbacks. Overusing plugins might leave your site vulnerable to a broad range of threats. Let’s talk about what you need to think about before you put one in.
How crucial is it that I install this plugin?
Finding a plugin in the WordPress plugin directory is easy, but before installing anything, you should ask yourself if you actually need it. Is this an essential plugin for the site?
While perusing the most popular plugins in the WordPress plugin directory, it’s crucial to ask yourself if you truly need to install a plugin before doing so.
Is it possible to complete my task without this plugin?
Plugins’ allure stems from the expectation that they can be installed with a single click of a “Install” button.
Non-developers may need to use a plugin even for basic features. Writing your own code in WordPress’s functions.php to prevent dependency on third-party plugins, however, could be a preferable alternative if you are a developer with a strong grasp of PHP, MySQL, and web development best practices and a bit of time.
There are more than 700 items returned when searching for “Facebook Like” in the WordPress plugin directory. Including a Facebook Like button on your WordPress articles is a simple matter of copying some code from the Facebook Developers documentation and pasting it into the right spot in the single.php or functions.php file of your theme.
Is this plugin superior to those that exist to compete with it?
Before settling on a plugin, it’s a good idea to have a comprehensive list of possibilities at your disposal. To begin, check out the available plugins and make a shortlist.
Find out as much as possible about them by reading internet evaluations of different plugins. Make sure the evaluation still applies in light of recent developments in the WordPress community.
Premium WordPress plugins used by sites such as PrimApp and TipTop aren’t something to overlook. If you compare commercial solutions to their free, open-source counterparts, you may find that the latter are more popular. They deserve your scrutiny, so please do so.
In the event that you do run into issues, the plugin’s creator is usually available to help you out.
Maintain a regular schedule of reviewing your plugins. It will take some time to get a comprehensive list of plugins.
What developer of a plugin do you trust the most?
You’re putting your faith in the plugin’s creator when you install it. For this reason, it’s crucial that you trust the authority you’ve picked.
It’s not always easy to tell who to believe. Although a newer developer may be the ideal option, they may not have the same level of name recognition as their more established counterparts. Answering this question is not an exact science, however here are some factors to think about: Examine the logs to see what the plugin has been up to. Look at the developer’s percentage of support issues addressed over the previous, say, two months to find out how responsive they are for plugins in the WordPress plugins directory.
Can it be used with the most recent release of WordPress?
Otherwise, you might want to hold off being the test subject for a time. You should go elsewhere if it has not been updated in the past year and has not been tested with the most recent release of WordPress. The WordPress Dashboard’s first page, or index, is where you can learn about the most recent updates to WordPress and find out which version you’re using.
Is there a plugin that does a comparable function that you’re already using?
Put simply, you shouldn’t put in any plugins that aren’t absolutely required. As you add additional plugins to your site, you run the risk of slowing it down and introducing new problems like incompatibilities, broken updates, and security holes. While it’s safe to utilise the great majority of the most downloaded plugins, you should still only enable the ones you’ll really use.
Similarly, there are a few plugins you should never use more than once. Yoast SEO and All In One SEO Pack, for instance, are two such plugins, and having both installed at once can lead to complications.
If you’re not sure whether plugins are compatible with each other, your web host can help you decide. For example, an SEO plugin and a social sharing plugin have quite different purposes. We’ve also written a post detailing the best and worst plugins for WordPress.
Conclusion
In conclusion, There you have it; those are the fundamentals you must meet before installing a WordPress plugin. If you have the misfortune of experiencing a plugin-related issue, you may easily identify the offending component by temporarily disabling it one by one. Alternatively, you may get into your File Manager, find the plugin folder for WordPress, and delete the offending plugin if you know which one is causing the white screen of death.