This article is a complete guide on “How to Choose a WordPress Plugin.”Trying to add plugins to your site to give more functionality. Indeed! you have chosen a right task. But before this work you need to create a website with necessary tools and equipments. Because plugin is a kind of tool that you can add to an existing site. There are many plugins both in the WordPress Plugin Directory and in the market place run and regulated by the plugins developers and third-party selling sites. Usually, you can access and install thousands of free plugins from the WordPress directory. You don’t have to pay for these because of Open-Source applications.
On the contrary, you can’t download and install a premium plugin until you pay off a due charge to the sellers and subscribe to their plan. There are hundreds of companies selling premium plugins in the market place. Which kind of plugins do you need? How many plugins are required to be installed in a WordPress site? These are some of the important subjects you should know, as you are going to learn ‘How to Choose a WordPress Plugin’ for your site.
Now, choosing the proper WordPress plugins is a matter of consideration. You have to take into considerations a number of facts, both the pros and cons. Also, keep in mind that plugins either can make your site more functional, speedy or slower. There exists a lot of difference in the performance, functionality, compatibility, support and coding of WordPress plugins. However, nothing to worry. Choosing proper WordPress plugins is not the first step, before it, you have to start a website from scratch and install WordPress. This great tutorial will assist you in selecting exact plugins for your site. Just follow it till the end and you will have a good experience on How to choose a WordPress plugin to add more functionality to your site.
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Make a List of Required Plugins
You have just begun to create a website, a good work but you need to add more tools and equipments to let your site perform more functions. Now, a general question may flash upon your mind, which are these tools and equipments to be added to my website? As we are working with WordPress, we need to add those tools which are used for WordPress CMS such as plugins, web application, web apps, addons etc. Plugins are great tools for websites built on WordPress platform. Thanks to WordPress developers! It has great resources—both free and paid, based on customer’s need. But also, keep in mind that adding too many plugins may cause slow your site if they are not properly encoded. If you install such kind of plugins, it may affect your SEO and business adversely.Site speed is a ranking factor in Google.
So, you need to install the required plugins on your site. All sites need some essential plugins regardless of what type of they are. However, you have to install some other plugins based on what type of site you have created, what type of services does your site offer and what type of interactions does it accept from visitors. That said,it is better to make a list of required plugins for your website. It saves your time and work.
Plugin Ratings
While you are going to choose a WordPress plugin, look at the plugin ratings section. Plugin rating is provided by every WordPress developer, at its plugin page. It consists of 1 to 5 star ratings, whereas rating by one star indicates least appreciation and rating by five star gives most appraisal. Generally, the experienced customers who have already used these plugins use star rating to evaluate and expose their opinions as to how important and effective these are. Premium plugins developers too provide rating section to their subscribers.
Plugin Review
Plugin Review lets you see whether the plugin is good, effective, SEO-optimised or not. Plugin review is attached to a link at the plugin page. Landing on this page you can see in details the reviews made about a particular plugin. It describes customer user experience(UX) on it. Besides, you can make Google search on the plugin to see more reviews made other users. Every plugin in the WordPress repository has plugin review option.
Active Support
Look at Active Support when you are about to choose a WordPress plugin for installing on your site. Because there is no guarantee that the plugin you are going to install will not cause any issue to your site. For the shake of security, better performance and more customisation, you may have to update your WordPress, theme, addons and other installed plugins. And, there is a chance that it might cause issues or may conflict with some tools. You will not be able to solve this issue unless you are a developer or have sufficient coding experience if the problem is related to coding. This is where you feel the need of active support. Each WordPress plugin has a page to discuss various issues on it. This is the Active Support page. Here you can post your issue and contact with the developers.
Update( Changelog)
Updating your WordPress, themes and plugins are necessary in order to yield better performance in speed, access, view from various cross platforms and enhanced security of your site. Update( Changelog) is required because with the change of version of WordPress, your plugins too need to be updated. If you don’t update, it may have adverse effects on your site such as causing error, low performance etc. Having changelog indicates that the developers are conscious about their plugins.
Active Installation
It is a good user experience that plugins with good performance and functioning have more active installations. On the other hand, plugins having low performance have less installations. However, it is not always true. Because, a good plugin providing good user experience may not have thousands and thousands active installation if it has been released within a very short period.
Coding and Performance
Coding is related with performance. A plugin built and coded improperly results in low performance. It causes your site slow. On the contrary, a well-coded plugin does not have adverse effect on your site. Neither it decreases your site speed nor conflicts with others. But the question is how can you check your plugin’s effect on your site speed. Does the plugin makes your site take more time in loading? No matter to worry. There are site speed testing tools out there like Pindom Test. Check your site speed before you install and activate the plugin. Again Install and activate the plugin and test your site speed. Now, you can compare the both results and ascertain whether a particular plugin causes your site slow.
Compatibility
Do you know whether the plugin will work or not with other tools within your site? Be careful while you are going to choose a WordPress plugin for your site. Because sometimes it is found that one plugin does not work with other ones. If the fact becomes true for a particular plugin, it may cause WordPress error or even may crash your site. That’s why you need to run a compatibility test to be confirmed about whether the plugin you are going to install is compatible or not with the current version of your WordPress. To run this test, you need a compatibility checker plugin like PHP Compatibility Checker. This plugin is free and available in the WordPress repository. Install and activate the plugin in your site. It will show you which plugins are compatible with your WordPress.
Also, you should know that plugins are the entry points to your site and hackers may use such kind of tools to break into your site, steal sensitive information or inject malicious codes. Don’t choose plugins from suspicious sites. If you like to install plugins on your site, then go to the trustworthy sites, developers or other marketplace with good business record and reputation. WordPress.org is the greatest repository of free plugins with good reputation.
How to Search for Plugins in WordPress Repository?
Go to Plugin submenu from WP-admin dashboard after logging in to your site. Click on Add under Plugin submenu and, in no time, it will point you to the WordPress plugin directory. You can search for a plugin by name or keyword.
WP-Admin>>Plugin>>Add New>>Search Plugins inside WordPress directory.
How to Install WordPress Plugin?
Installing a wordpress plugin is quite easy. Just go to the WordPress plugin repository from plugin submenu under appearance. Search for a plugin by name, category or keyword. The plugin will appear in no time and you can install it on your web server just by clicking on ‘Install Now” button. Want to know more about it? Read our article on How to install and set up a WordPress plugin?
