Wordpress Plugin Handbook

Nowadays, sites that meet user expectations perfectly are also the ones that receive the most traffic on the internet. Some developers resort to producing their own tools to adapt site content to user expectations. However, on WordPress-based sites, it is sufficient to use plugins to optimize the user experience. Through the guide I prepared for you, you will be able to find out “What are WP plugins, what are they used for, how and for what purposes are they used?” You can find comprehensive answers to your questions. Here is the Wordpress Plugin Handbook I prepared for you…

What is WordPress Plugin?

WordPress Plugin, or WordPress plugin in our language, is small-sized software used to functionally improve a site. Plugins enable site owners to provide better experiences to their users without the need for coding knowledge. There are over 50 thousand plugins designed for different purposes in the digital repository made available by WordPress. It is worth noting that in addition to approved plug-ins, the number of third-party plug-ins is also quite high.

WP Plugins are produced using the PHP programming language. Depending on what tasks the plugin will perform and what opportunities it will offer to its users, it may contain CSS, HTML, JavaScript, PHP codes. WordPress Plugin API is mainly used to create plugins. However, different editors can also be preferred to develop plug-ins.

You can download most of the WordPress plugins for free and start using them on your website. However, in order to install some plug-ins on the site, it is necessary to pay a certain amount. These types of plugins are referred to by names such as premium or paid. The most important features that distinguish free plug-ins from paid versions are their functionality. Free ones generally have certain features; but you may also encounter exceptions. Paid WordPress plugins, on the other hand, offer their users much more functionality and customization flexibility.

The size of a plugin is directly proportional to the benefit it provides. In other words, the more features and customization options it has, the more space it will take up on the server on which it is installed. Of course, this increase is never critical enough to cause inadequacy in the hosting package or a decrease in the performance of the site.

Benefits of WordPress Plugins

WordPress plugins are essential tools that enhance the functionality and customization of your website. Here are some key benefits of using WordPress plugins:

1. Extensive Customization: Plugins allow you to easily tailor your website to meet your specific needs. From appearance to functionality, plugins provide a wide range of customization options.
2. Easy Integration: They simplify the integration with third-party services. Whether it’s social media, payment gateways, or email marketing tools, plugins make it easy to connect your website with other platforms.
3. SEO Optimization: SEO plugins help improve your site’s search engine rankings and drive organic traffic. These plugins offer features such as keyword optimization, meta tags, and sitemap creation.
4. Enhanced Security: Security plugins protect your site from cyber threats. They offer features like firewalls, malware scanning, and spam protection to keep your site safe.
5. Performance Improvements: Performance plugins boost your site’s speed and enhance user experience. They provide features such as caching, image optimization, and database cleanup.
6. E-commerce Solutions: Plugins like WooCommerce can transform your WordPress site into a full-fledged e-commerce platform. They offer functionalities for product management, payment processing, and shipping options.
7. Ease of Management: Management plugins streamline site administration. They facilitate tasks such as backups, analytics, and content management, making it easier to run your website efficiently.

WordPress plugins, with their user-friendly interfaces and extensive features, help you develop and manage your website effectively. By choosing the right plugins for your site’s needs, you can create a more efficient and engaging web experience.

Disadvantages of WordPress Plugins

While WordPress plugins offer numerous benefits, they also come with certain drawbacks. Here are some common disadvantages of using WordPress plugins:

1. Performance Issues: Using too many plugins or poorly coded plugins can slow down your website. This can lead to longer load times and a poor user experience.
2. Security Risks: Some plugins, especially those that are not regularly updated, can have security vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities can be exploited by hackers to gain unauthorized access to your site.
3. Compatibility Problems: Plugins can sometimes conflict with each other or with your theme, causing your site to malfunction or display errors.
4. Frequent Updates: Plugins need to be updated regularly to ensure compatibility with the latest version of WordPress and to patch security vulnerabilities. However, updates can sometimes break your site’s functionality.
5. Dependence on Developers: Relying heavily on plugins can be risky if the developer stops maintaining or updating the plugin. This can leave your site without crucial functionality or security updates.
6. Cost: While many plugins are free, some premium plugins can be expensive. If you require multiple premium plugins, the costs can add up quickly.
7. Varying Quality and Support: The quality and support of plugins can vary widely. Some plugins are well-maintained and come with excellent support, while others may be poorly maintained with little or no support.
8. Complex Management: Managing numerous plugins can be challenging and time-consuming. Ensuring all plugins are up-to-date, compatible, and secure requires regular attention.

To mitigate these disadvantages, it’s important to choose plugins carefully, regularly update them, and only use plugins from reputable sources. This will help ensure your website remains fast, secure, and functional.

What Do WordPress Plugins Do?

To understand what plugins do, it is useful to first know how they work. WordPress plugins allow you to increase the functionality of your site or enhance features that are already in use. Moreover, they achieve this gain without requiring changes to the underlying files. Plugins use access points provided by the WordPress API to connect to the source code. The task of access points is to activate/deactivate the plug-in’s functions when necessary.

Thanks to plugins, you can add features such as WhatsApp share button and Google translation to your site without spending time writing extra code. With another plugin, you can offer your visitors more social media sharing options and increase the usefulness of contact forms. If you have an e-commerce site, you can install a plugin on your site to assist your customers during payment or to enable them to benefit from live communication.

Some types of plugins can also help you increase your sales chart. For example, you can use a slider plugin to include eye-catching images on pages. With another, you can make it easier for users who visit your site to participate in e-mail subscriptions. Thus, you can have the opportunity to announce your campaigns to large audiences much more effortlessly than classical methods. If you wish, you can even create surveys with the help of plug-ins and get detailed information about user expectations.

Many WordPress plugins allow changes to be made to the front end of the site that improve the user experience. In addition, there are many plugins that work in the background and make the job of the site administrator easier. Types of plugins that make site management practical can automate backups in case of data failure. Plugins that run in the background also help you scan for broken links, run A/B tests, and put your site in maintenance mode.

What are the WordPress Plugin Types?

WordPress plugins are divided into two main groups: paid and premium. However, it is possible to classify plug-ins in more detail according to the tasks they undertake. From this perspective, the most used WordPress plugin types today are:

SMTP Plugins

On WordPress-based sites, you can send emails without installing a plugin. However, this is most likely done with PHP code in its default location and could trigger a chronic problem. PHP-generated emails often land in the spam folder. Therefore, there is a high probability that it will be deleted without ever being viewed by the recipient. The SMTP plugin eliminates this problem. In other words, it allows you to send e-mail from your site using the same protocol used by clients.

Sitemap Plugins

Sitemaps are important because they help search engines identify your website’s indexes. They also serve as an alternative way for the user to access the target page. Plugins developed for this purpose make it possible to create the site map in XML format and error-free.

Security Plugins

Security plugins are one of the most common plugin types used on WordPress-based sites. This is because the number of cyber attacks against sites using the WordPress infrastructure is always high. The roles played by security plugins are quite different. For example; While some plugins only limit login attempts, others offer much more comprehensive measures. Therefore, it is useful to take the needs into consideration during the selection phase.

Additionally, it is of great importance that the plugins you use to increase the security of your website are licensed/original. Since service providers frequently update their software and address security flaws. This makes the software more resilient to cyber attacks and protects your data.

Backup Plugins

Hosting companies offer many practical options to site owners within the scope of hosting services. In fact, the most popular of these is cPanel backups. However, WordPress backup plugins are different from those offered as part of the hosting service. For example, the size of backup files created through such plug-ins is much smaller than their counterparts obtained using classical methods. Therefore, the restoration process can be completed faster. Thanks to some backup plugins, backup files created can also be stored off-site.

Refactoring Plugins

Many popular browsers expect sites to be completely trustworthy, with the goal of providing an impressive user experience. Within the scope of this expectation, the SSL certificate is first checked on the site. If the site link does not contain the “https” tag, the browser warns visitors to stay away from the site. Moreover, this warning covers all links and multimedia files on the website. Restructuring is required to correct this deficiency. However, doing this manually is a task with a high probability of error and can lead to serious loss of time. In contrast, reconstruction plugins complete the entire process quickly and completely.

Form Plugins

Forms are the most important tools that provide detailed information about users visiting the site. For this reason, all brands, especially e-commerce focused initiatives, include various forms on their websites. Forms also undertake the task of receiving information and delivering it to the relevant place. Of course, manually designing each form and integrating it into the site is time-consuming and error-prone, just like restructuring. Naturally, you can use WordPress form plugins like many others. In this way, you can practically take precautions against the possibility of spam and malicious attempts in your e-mail subscription list.

E-commerce Plugins

When you want to add an e-commerce infrastructure after converting a WordPress template whose theme you like into a website, you can get help from such plugins. Moreover, many of the e-commerce plugins are package solutions. In other words, the site administrator can add features such as a shopping cart, payment and contact form, and live support to the site without writing even a single line of code.

Caching Plugins

Caching ensures that static copies of site pages are created on the visitor side and can be quickly restored when needed. WordPress sites can use four different types of caching. These; visitor computer, CDN, server and site-based caching. By using plugins focused on this purpose, you can make it possible to complete the caching processes of your site flawlessly. Of course, be sure to use only one caching plugin on your site, as running several at the same time may cause conflicts.

SEO Plugins

Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, increases the visibility of websites. Since websites that comply with SEO criteria rank at the top of search results, their number of visitors can reach incredible levels. Of course, this requires detailed studies. For WordPress-based sites, using optimization plugins is more than enough. Thanks to the SEO plugin, you can analyze the current status of your site and take the necessary steps quickly.

Site Design Plugins

WordPress offers designers the opportunity to easily turn their ideas into reality. You can create very original themes by manually editing HTML, CSS and all other codes. When you want to speed up the process, you can use site design plugins. Plugins that make site design easier are ideal solutions, especially for people with limited knowledge on this subject. You can even have the opportunity to easily optimize the images on your site with some of the plugins in this category.

What to Consider When Choosing a WordPress Plugin?

WordPress is the most preferred open source content management system. As a result of this situation, you may encounter thousands of add-ons available from both approved and third-party sources to meet your different needs. So, do you know what you should pay attention to when choosing among the options you encounter? Here are the most important criteria that will guide you in this regard:

Site Requirements

Before choosing among WordPress plugins, you can focus on what tools your site might need. Because many plugins added with the thought that they may be needed may cause a decrease in site performance over time. It may even cause conflicting issues and disrupt the website’s delivery. Regardless of this issue, it is useful to examine the content of the hosting package in case the service provider offers a feature similar to the benefit that the plug-in will provide. Of course, you can also examine user expectations and behaviors in parallel with the site requirements.

Making the Plugin Reliable

When it comes to installing external software on a site or application, security is among the criteria to be considered. To avoid this problem, you can give priority to approved plugins in the repository created by WordPress. When you are considering choosing a third-party plugin, you can take a look at the number of downloads and the scores given by users.

Update Frequency and Compatibility

Plugin updates are an important issue for security. Updates typically include bug fixes and usability improvements, as well as security patches. Therefore, the update frequency must be taken into consideration when choosing a plugin. It would also be wise to check the compatibility between the WordPress version you are using and the plugin. Fortunately, it is extremely easy to access information regarding both criteria. The official repository created by WordPress contains detailed information about the last update date for each plugin and the versions it is compatible with.

User comments

Sometimes the scores given to the plugin can be misleading. Therefore, it may be necessary to look at user comments. Since reading every user comment will be a tiring and time-consuming process, you can make certain choices. For example, you can focus on the latest positive and negative user reviews. Reviews of add-ons available in the official repository are located right below the download button.

Technical Support and Documentation

The last criterion you can consider when choosing a plugin is technical support and documentation. The biggest reason for this is that it increases your likelihood of getting quick solutions to many issues, from installation to problems that occur during use. All plugins in the WordPress Plugins repository have forums opened in the support tab. If you observe a regular flow of information in this section, it means that the developer is actively dealing with user issues. However, some developers may also share information from different sources to create their own support channels.

How to Use WordPress Plugins?

When you want to increase the functionality of your site with WP plugins, you can turn to two different sources. The first of these resources is the Official WordPress Plugins Repository, which is frequently mentioned in this guide. The other is the WordPress Plugins Database. The common feature of both resources is that their catalogs are very wide and the plug-ins they contain are safe. Of course, if you wish, you can also choose popular third-party sites according to your needs.

Plugins available in the official repository and database can be automatically installed with a single click within the content management system. Just click Plugins – Add New from the menu. After finding the plugin you need via the search bar, you can complete the process with the Install and Activate steps. Add-ons obtained from third-party sites must first be downloaded to the computer as a ZIP file. After this process, you can follow the steps listed below.

• In the control panel of the content management system, click on the “Plugins” and “Add New” options, respectively.
• Click on the “Upload Plugin” command.
• It seems like you want to upload a ZIP file. Please go ahead and drag and drop the file here, and I’ll assist you further.
• Click the ‘Install Now’ button and wait for the installation to finish.
• In the last step, click on the “Activate Plugin” button.

After these steps, most plugins can be used immediately. However, it is useful to configure their settings to make sure they work as desired.

How to Update a WordPress Plugin?

Updating a WordPress plugin is done through the control panel. Moreover, the content management system allows you to easily notice that there is a new plugin update through visual alerts. When you see a warning next to the Updates option, you can take the necessary action manually or automatically. Manual updating consists of first selecting the plugin and then selecting the “Apply” command from the bulk actions menu.

Manually updating multiple plugins is time-consuming and requires regular checking. Therefore, you can activate the automatic update feature to save time. To do this, simply check the box in the “Automatic Update” column for each plugin. However, even if you start using the automatic update feature, it will be beneficial for you to manually handle security-related add-ons. Because updating such plugins immediately prevents your site from becoming vulnerable to current threats.

How to Remove or Disable WordPress Plugins?

Sometimes plugins may negatively affect site performance or more functional alternatives may have emerged that can be used instead. In fact, most plugins that come by default are deemed unnecessary by site administrators. In such cases, the plug-ins in question may be removed or deactivated. If you need to take such action, you can follow these steps:

1. While in the management menu, click on the “Plugins – Installed Plugins” pages.
2. Select the plugin you want to remove or disable from the table on the last page.
3. Click the “Disable” command under the plugin name. This command stops the plugin from running.
4. You can select the “Delete” command to completely remove the plugin from your site.

In this article, I have prepared a comprehensive WordPress plugin handbook for you. Thank you for reading and sharing with your friends 😃