WordPress Plugins (WP)

What You Should Know

Word press is an open-source content management system that helps create quality functional websites. The purpose of word press plugins is to expand your site, adding technical features that benefit both the website developer and the consumer.

The intention behind plugins is to complete simple as well as complex tasks while ensuring the WordPress website continues to function. It’s basically an add-on to the website framework.

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There are all kinds of WordPress plugins available, from those that add an e-commerce function, create a calendar, or a slider effect. Web designers that specialize in WP all use these!

Pros and Cons of Word Press Plugins

There are many advantages to having Word Press plugins :

• Save a lot of development time. There are thousands of WP plugins that are accessible for web developers (available via Wordpress.org).
• Offer flexibility and scalability. For example, WordPress does not have all the functionalities for every website’s needs. Hence, why WP plugins help to customize and help. Examples of this would be changing/disabling style fonts, colors, and re-sizing images/shapes to match the website to their desire.
• Most Word press plugins are exceptionally reliable and updated regularly by web developers. Plugins are regularly being updating in order to provide zero issues for both the developer and the website visitors.

Cons of Word Press Plugins

Even though there are many advantages to having WordPress plugins, there are some disadvantages as well.

• Not updating the website as well as the plugins can leave your site susceptible to attacks. Many plugins are constantly being updated, but not all. This means that if your plugins are not being updating, they become increasingly vulnerable to hackers. WP White Security research shows that 54% of WordPress susceptibilities come from plugins.
• Certain plugins can interfere with others. Plugins are an effective way to build your website but adding too much can create conflicts that in turn, reduce the functionality of your site, and even break it! Hence, testing plugins prior to deploying them should be a number one priority.
• Plugins can have an adverse effect on performance. For example, plugins often loaded onto your web page. This results in an increasing amount of assets being loaded every time a new user comes to your site, resulting in slowing the website.

How do Add/Disable Word Press Plugins

So how do you install these assets? Web developers and web design agencies all follow the same steps when installing and removing them. Prior to installation it always makes sense to have a staging server where you can test each plugin. This will help you save the headache just in case the plugin breaks your website or is not up to your expectations.

How to Add Plugins

First, you want to head over to Wordpress.org and log in with your credentials. Then you want to navigate to ‘plugins’ and click ‘add new.’ Once you have found the plugin, ‘install’ it and then ‘activate’ it (if the plugin was successfully installed, you will see a little green box saying so.) You will now be able to use and configure the plugin. Some configurations are straightforward, but others will require shortcodes to be placed on specific pages, widget areas, or posts.

How to Disable Plugins

If you decide that the plugin is just not doing it for you, there are a few different ways you can disable word press plugins.

• If you would like to disable one plugin, navigate to your ‘plugins’. This is found on your dashboard sidebar and click the ‘deactivate’ link. This will disable that plugin. If you want to disable more than one plugin at once, check the boxes next to each plugin. Once you have selected all your plugins, navigate to the “deactivate’ link and click apply. This will disable all the plugins you have previously selected.
• The alternative is accessing all the plugins via Cpanel, and either deleting them or renaming them. This method is used by web developers and helps them to customize and identify issues.

Compatibility issues Between WordPress Plugins

How to prevent plugin issues

You can never ensure that a plugin will not cause compatibility issues, There a series of steps in order to decrease the chance of compatibility issues.

• Check if the plugin you are installing is compatible with your version of WordPress (this information can be identified at the WordPress Plugin Directory.)
• Check when the plugin was last updated. Plugins that have not been updating in the past 6 months should be avoided completely.
• Check the plugin’s reviews and ratings.
• Avoid installing plugins that may be similar in terms of functionalities.

How to Identify a Potential Plugin Compatibility error

If you believe that your site is experiencing a plugin compatibility issue. Navigate to your “plugins” tab, and “deactivate” one of your plugins, preferably the one most recently installed/updated.

Next, navigate back to your website and test whether all the features are working, or if the problem still exists. If your website works flawlessly, then you have found the issue.

If the issue is still there then navigate back to your “plugins” tab, reactivate the deactivated plugin, and move down the list. After repeating these steps for all plugins, you should find the broken one. If you do not find the issue, then you are most likely dealing with other issues and will make sense to reach out to a WordPress Developer.

Update Plugins

As a WordPress website owner it is paramount that Plugins be regularly and safely updated. Unless you take care of it immediately your website may stand the chance of failure.

Essential Business Plugins

Following is a list of some WP business plugins used on many websites, and can benefit any WordPress website functionality.

WP Forms is the most user-friendly contact form plugin. WP forms allow the developer to make a reliable contact information page, that grants the consumer a way to contact you. Simply drag and drop the online form builder into your web page to easily create contact forms, email subscription forms, online order forms, payment forms, surveys, polls, and basically all other types of online forms with just a few clicks. Over the past 4 years, WP forms have racked up over 4 million websites that use their simple and reliable forms, and they have maintained a 4.9 out of 5-star rating.

Monsters-Insight is the best Google Analytics plugin that allows you to see how many people visit your website. After analyzing the information granted from Google analytics you can optimize your website accordingly to increase traffic, subscribers, and revenue. This is a simple way to optimize your web page in order to increase the traffic on your website, while also receiving important analytical data that can assist in many growth factors. Monster-insight is used by over 2 million websites and is continuing to grow.

Optin-Monster is the most popular conversion rate optimization software. It allows you to convert abandoning website visitors into email subscribers and customers. You can use their hundreds of high-converting templates to create WordPress popups, slide-ins, announcement bars, gamified spin a wheel, and full-screen welcome mats to capture user’s attention. Optin-Monsters allow you to personalize your display targeting features to intrigue the user at the right moments when browsing your webpage.

SEO Plugins

There are many SEO plugins SEO companies, search engine optimization experts as well as webmasters use. Such plugins help them optimize websites and help them rank high.

All in One SEO assists you by getting more visitors from different search engines to your website. All in one SEO offers you the best tools and features for your website, in order to improve your on-page SEO. These improvements consist of adding meta tags, generating sitemaps, connecting your webpage to Google Search Console, optimizing it for social media, and many more. With over 2 million websites using this WordPress plugin, it is sure to bring you the best results your page needs to grow.

Yoast is an excellent addition to any website. It identifies the readability as well as helps in creating the right meta tags, and on-page SEO.

Security Plugins

Security plugins help protect websites from malicious attacks, as well as prevent downtime and performance issues.

Sucuri is the industry leader in WordPress security. It is one of the best WordPress security plugins on the market. They offer a basic free plugin that helps you harden WordPress security and scan your website for common threats. Additionally, if you opt for the paid plan you will receive the “best WordPress firewall” protection. Sucuri website firewall filters out bad traffic even before it reaches your server. They also serve static content from their own CDN servers. Apart from security, their DNS level firewall with CDN gives you a tremendous performance boost and speeds up your website. Most importantly, they offer to clean up your WordPress site if it gets affected by malware at no additional cost.

Word-Fence offers a free version of their plugin which comes with a powerful malware scanner, exploit detection, and threat assessment features. The plugin will automatically scan your website for common threats, but you can also launch a full scan at any time. You will be alerted if any signs of a security breach are detected with the instructions to fix them. It also comes with a built-in firewall. However, this firewall runs on your server just before loading WordPress. This makes it a little less effective than a DNS-level firewall like Sucuri. Overall, word-fence offers a reliable free security system that will give you the edge you need on hackers/threats.