What Is A Plugin? Best Things to Know?

Joseph Samuel
2 min readFeb 22, 2021
plugin development

There is practically no limit to what you can do with WordPress plugins-if you want to do it, from e-commerce to SEO, from interface features to social networking, from encryption to spam protection, there is definitely a plugin for it. In the WordPress.org repository, there are more than 50,000 free plugins available, and hundreds of more premium plugins available in the commercial marketplace.

Why Are Plugins Used?

In order to expand or add features to the website, plugins are included. For eg, whether you want to sell items on your web or accept donations, you would need a plugin to manage that. Other plugins required for most WordPress websites include a WordPress backup plugin, a protection plugin for WordPress, a plugin for WordPress types, a plugin for WordPress SEO, just to mention a couple.

You’re probably still using WordPress if you’re reading this. For blogs, WordPress is an exemplary content management system (CMS), powering 37 percent of all websites on the internet. Even with all that strength, WordPress can’t do anything by itself. That’s where the plugins get into the picture. But just because a plugin helps you to do that doesn’t mean you can.

What Is a Plugin? Best Things You Need to Know?

These 11 things you need to know about WordPress plugins will help you search through the choices and decisions you have to make about using plugins and create a WordPress website that is lean, secure, but innovative, and usable. These best practices will serve as guidance for you to avoid pitfalls so that you can move on with your company’s business.

1. Less is more with Plugins:- Plugins are fantastic tools because they allow the site to do stuff it wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. But, the more plugins you have, the higher your site’s chance of problems arising. Plugin problems can be random and unexpected, or more specific issues related to plugin or WordPress upgrades. Plugins can also conflict with other plugins or even themes.

2. Keep Your Plugins Updated:- If when the developer offers it, you are not updating your plugins development, you are exposing yourself to potential frustrations and possible security violations. We can honestly tell you as plugin developers that we don’t update plugins just for the fun of it, but we ultimately want to make sure that our plugins work at their peak performance levels.

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