All about plugins in WordPress

What is a plugin?

In one sentence: it is something that is responsible for adding new functionality to WP.

When you install a bare WordPress theme, it will contain three sample themes and two basic plugins. As standard, you can perform various activities on each WP, e.g. publish entries or make a simple blog page.

What can you do in “naked” WP?

You can set WP so that the home page can contain blog entries or the blog page can be a subpage. However, you can always publish entries and pages in the naked WP. You can later add the created pages to the menu, thanks to which the skeleton of a simple website consisting of the main page and subpages will be created.

In company business cards, home is the most common, i.e. the home page and subpages: offer, gallery, contact. When it comes to a blog, it usually consists of a home page and sub-pages of posts. The advantage is that the category and tags option is already available by default in WP.

We also have archival pages that are generated automatically. On such a page, e.g. after clicking on a given tag, entries related to that tag appear. After clicking on a category, it is similar – entries from a given category are displayed.

Virtually every theme can be set to make the home page static. You can then decide which items to contain and in what order they will be displayed. Sometimes it may be that the theme has a built-in page builder, thanks to which you can easily rearrange elements. It may also be that the home page is defined by a given theme and there is little you can edit in it (I wrote about themes previously).

The theme determines the appearance and layout – plugins with functionality

If you want an additional element to appear in the theme, e.g. a contact form – you will need the appropriate plugin.

After installing “bare” WordPress, you have 2 free plugins available: Hello Dolly and Akismet.

Akismet

If your website is commercial and you make money from it, you should buy Akismet. Many people forget about it or think, “Since they gave a free anti-spam plugin, I use it. It’s free, it doesn’t ask for any payments, it works, why not use it. ” Akismet’s license for commercial use says explicitly that in this case it is a paid plug-in. Please don’t be a business janusz and just buy it.

Of course, apart from Akismet, there are also other spam plugins that work and do not have such license restrictions (eg Antispam Bee). Personally, I most often kick Akismet and install the latter. Your decision.

Hello Dolly – a relict of the past

Hello Dolly, of course, does nothing. It displays excerpts from one jazz song in the cockpit. You could say that it is completely unnecessary. Why then is it installed at startup? Well, because when plugins were created, they were created first. It is such a sentimental, archival plug. In fact, after installing WP, it is worth removing it. It will not be updated, nor is it needed for anything.

Where to get the plugins?

To have a plug-in, you first need to find it and then install it. Where to find the free ones? There are two options: WP Cockpit and WP Repository.

WP plugins from the dashboard

When you enter the WP dashboard, there is a link to plugins in the menu on the left. After clicking “all plugins” you will see a screen where, after selecting “add new”, you will see various plugins, among which you can search for your desired one. You can search there by keywords or plug-in developers.

It’s really that simple. You go to plugins, click “add new”, search and install.

WordPress repository

I mean: www.wordpres.org. On this page, under the “plugins” tab, you will find 58 383 plug-ins. That’s a lot. Fortunately, you don’t need to know them all, because there is a well-functioning search engine.

How to search? Preferably in key words and in English. For example, if you want a plug-in to a contact form, you enter “contact form” and you are looking for. You will see a lot of plug-ins with forms. A total of 49 subpages were shown to me. That’s a lot. Of course, not all of these plugins are forms themselves. Some of them are form derivatives or form integrations with something else.

Basically the same plugins will appear in the dashboard after selecting the option to add a new plugin. Why? Because that’s where plugins from this repository are found.

How to choose a plug?

Since there are so many of them and you don’t know any of them, how do you decide which one to choose? You can read about it somewhere on the net or ask others in groups: “What’s the best plugin for the contact form?”. Of course, you’ll get a lot of different answers. You’ll find a lot of different articles, including plug-in comparisons. When looking for information, you will find that most sources recommend the same and proven plugins.

What to look for when looking in the repository?

At first glance, the plugin lists its name, number of ratings, a short description of who the creator is, how many active installations there are and with which WP version the plug will work.

When you go into the details of a given plugin, you will see: long description, videos showing how it works, integrations and other detailed information. And what I like the most: screenshots. If I don’t know the plugin and I’m looking for it for a new project (and clients like to have really cool ideas), then I browse the screenshots (they are also available through the cockpit). By clicking on the next screenshots, you will see the settings of a given plugin, what it looks like and what its capabilities are. This is cool – it allows you to see what you are installing.

It happens, however, that there are no screens. Then you install such a plug, look for the necessary settings – there is no one, throw it away and install another one. And so on and on until you find the right one.

It often happens that if someone does not know plugins and has no favorites, he even installs 5/8 / teens until he finds the right one. Sometimes a plugin’s popularity is a good lead. If it is high, it means that it works well with others and responds to the needs of users.

Sometimes you want one particular dings. For example, I used to look for a plug-in that would allow the person filling out the contact form to immediately attach a CV file. From the vending machine. Well, I searched … Because there was such an option in the plug-in descriptions, but 99% of it was a paid option. You had to buy the PRO version and then the “attach CV” window appeared. Fortunately, it turned out that the good old Contact Form 7 plugin has such an option in the free version. Well, but I searched. Sometimes it is so, that when looking for something, we have to install some of these plugins.

Remember, if you already have a situation where when looking for a plug-in, you install them 3/5/8 / teen and finally find the one you like, this is the right time to remove the previous ones. In a month or two you will not remember where suddenly so many plugs came from and what they are all for. Forgotten plugins, turned on, and when you let go, they can bite, PHP code can get overwritten, and eventually everything can stop working.

How to install the plugin?

Once you’ve chosen a plug-in, click “install” and then just “enable”. All philosophy.

What’s next?

Each plug-in has its own settings and you have to remember about that. Once installed and running, the settings can be found in one of three places.

Larger plugs have their own place on the left side of the cockpit menu. This is where the name of the plug is displayed and everything related to it is shown. For example, for WP Forms there will be an additional field with this name. If you click on them, you’ll see one sample initial form and all your forms (all editable).
“Settings” tab submenu. There is an item “settings” in the menu on the left and some plugins are included. In the beginning, there are seven items, after some time you can do much more.
Tools – plugs connect here too.

Plugs for plugs

Sometimes you will install plugins for plugins (e.g. for WooComerce). If there is a need to extend the operation of the toilet, you can, for example, install a plug that adapts the toilet to the Polish market or a plug for payments or making appointments. In this case, this type of plug should connect to the parent one.

WP plugin updates

Plugins need to be updated. Necessarily! For those who think otherwise, I would like to refer you to the recording of a song with Krzysiek Dróżdż. Maybe you’ll believe him. And if not him, then … Live as you like. Do what you like. But really, when it comes to WordPress-related updates, you just have to do them. It’s open source and licensed add-ons, codes, etc. It’s all freely available.

There is a group of people who like to hurt other people. The fact that you have a little blogger somewhere on the edge of the internet doesn’t matter. It’s not that if your blogesek is small, someone will not want to hurt you by hacking your website. This is bad thinking. He doesn’t care who the author is. He will be interested in the fact that blogasek has out-of-date plugins, for which he has a robot that just uses this hole, just to redirect your blog’s domain to the page with videos. And these won’t be children’s films. And they will not be advertisements for a natural lens. For example, these will be tablet ads that you don’t want to advertise. Believe me.