How To Use Wordpress Plugins

From blogs to complex portals and enterprise websites, millions of sites are powered past WordPress. In fact, 40.2% of all websites are congenital on the open-source content direction organisation (CMS).

Driving the platform's popularity is its combined ease of use and flexibility. WordPress provides standard functionality to allow whatever user to go a site up and running in no fourth dimension.

Yous can create posts and pages, manage and schedule content, assign user roles, upload and insert images and other media, and moderate comments right out-of-the-box.

Let's say y'all practice all that and want to continue edifice your site by customizing your login page or calculation social proof to your posts and pages, for example. Since WordPress is open up-source, you could extend or modify the source code to create nearly whatever functionality your site needs. Such flexibility is a huge appeal for WordPress developers.

But what if you're not a developer and don't take much experience coding? In that case, y'all can use a plugin.

WordPress plugins are like apps on your phone. You lot can download or purchase them to add or raise the functionality of your WordPress website.

Plugins allow WordPress users to create powerful sites without touching a single line of code. Equally content management systems continue to democratize web design and allay the dependency on spider web developers and designers, plugins are an increasingly integral part of how we create and consume content on the cyberspace.

This mail service volition give you an overview of what WordPress plugins are, how they piece of work, and some of the most pop examples.

1. What is a WordPress plugin?

2. How do WordPress plugins work?

3. How to Employ a Plugin in WordPress

4. Must-Have WordPress Plugins

5. All-time WordPress Plugins

6. Complimentary WordPress Plugins

What is a WordPress plugin?

A WordPress plugin is a slice of software that "plugs into" your WordPress site. Plugins can add new functionality or extend existing functionality on your site, assuasive you to create near whatever kind of website, from ecommerce stores to portfolios to directory sites.

Plugins can make pocket-sized tweaks on your site or massive changes, depending on their features. For example, you could use a plugin to add a WhatsApp share button to your site or to create a fully multilingual site. Or, if you run an ecommerce business, you might install a plugin to assist with payment gateways or allow visitors to volume appointments online.

In that location are also plugins that can help yous enhance your contact forms, brand beautiful sliders, backup your site in instance of data failure, and brand e-mail opt-in easy — plus much more.

While many make changes to the front end of your site, some plugins brand changes on the dorsum end and then maintenance is easier for your team. These plugins might allow yous to browse your site for broken links, run A/B tests, or put your site into maintenance style, for instance.

At present that we have a meliorate understanding of what plugins are, let'south take a closer look at how they work.

How exercise WordPress plugins work?

Plugins allow you lot to add together or extend the functionality of your WordPress site without changing cadre WordPress files. Plugins use access points, formally known as filter and action hooks, provided past the WordPress Plugin API to "hook into" the source lawmaking. These access points and methods volition call the functions of the plugin at specific times and modify the default behavior of WordPress.

A plugin developer who wants to use the WordPress Plugin API to create a plugin will first by creating a PHP part to, say, delete comments with profanity from their site. So they'll claw the function to a specific event, such equally saving comments to the WordPress database or publishing a post, by using the add_filter() function or add_action() function.

Allow'due south say this developer wants to create a plugin that adds a line of text that says "Thank you for reading!" below every mail service on a WordPress site. In that example, the function of the plugin would be calculation "Thank you for reading!" to a post and the outcome that triggers the part would be publishing a post. So their plugin file would look something similar the following:

                              
<?php
/**
* Plugin Name: Thank You Plugin
* Plugin URI: http://world wide web.mywebsite.com/thank-you-plugin
* Description: The very offset plugin that I have ever created.
* Version: 1.0
* Writer: Your Name
* Author URI: http://www.mywebsite.com
*/
                
add_action( 'the_content', 'my_thank_you_text' );
                
office my_thank_you_text ( $content ) {
render $content .= '<p>Cheers for reading!</p>';
                
?>
                          

Now let's say you're a site owner who wants to add together this functionality to your site. In that instance, you'd need to add together the plugin to your WordPress website. Let's look at the different ways you can do so below.

How to Utilise a Plugin in WordPress

There are multiple ways tin add together WordPress plugins to your site. For example, you lot can do and so from your dashboard, from the official WordPress plugin directory, or from third-party sites. Plugins from the official directory can be automatically installed in one click, while some premium plugins have to be manually installed via a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) client.

To install a plugin from the official WordPress directory, you only accept to log into your dashboard and select Plugins > Add New. Then search for the plugin using the built-in search bar. From there, y'all only have to click Install and Actuate.

To understand how to install a plugin that's not available in the official directory, let's return to the plugin instance above. If the "Thank you for reading!" plugin is not available in the directory, and then you would download the plugin as a zip file and save it in the wp-content/plugins folder of your directory via an FTP client. This would automatically install the plugin to your WordPress site.

Y'all'd then navigate to Plugins in your admin dashboard. Once yous located the newly uploaded plugin from the listing of installed plugins on your site, you'd merely click the plugin's "Activate" link and exist all set! From so on, every time you published a mail service, the line "Thanks for reading!" would be automatically added to the bottom of the post.

Most plugins begin working right abroad, but you lot may need to configure their settings to ensure they're working the way you desire them to. For example, if you were using the WP Staging – DB & File Duplicator & Migrationplugin to set up a WordPress staging site, then you'd need to get to the plugin's settings page and click Create New Staging Site.And so, enter in some information like the proper noun of the staging site and what content you wanted to be copied. Otherwise, the plugin wouldn't up a staging site automatically.

If this sounds like a lot of work, then you might be wondering why people apply plugins instead of editing core WordPress files to add together functionality to their site. That's because, when updating to a new version of WordPress, all the core files — and whatever edits made to them — are overwritten. To add that same functionality on your updated site, you'd have to get back in and edit the cadre files again.

However, if you install plugins to add functionality to your site, then you lot just demand to worry nearly keeping the plugins updated.

Now that nosotros sympathise what plugins are, how they work, and how to use them, let'southward expect at some plugins that tin add essential features to your WordPress site.

Must-Have WordPress Plugins

WordPress offers essential standard functionality to become you publishing visual content as soon as possible to concenter your target audition. Withal, it'south missing some key features to help you engage and delight these visitors. The must-take WordPress plugins below tin assistance optimize your content, enhance your site or landing pages, advance your conversion strategy, and go on your visitors coming dorsum.

1. HubSpot WordPress Plugin

HubSpot's elevate-and-driblet course builder allows yous to easily build contact forms to use on your WordPress website — that automatically sync with the HubSpot CRM. The plugin also includes a pop-up creator, live chat and chatbot builder, email marketing, and more — all within WordPress.

HubSpot'due south WordPress Plugin is unique because information technology'south an all-in-one plugin — it helps you stay efficient by keeping all of its features in a single location. Having a large number of plugins can slow downward your website. Just considering HubSpot provides everything in i plugin, the tool keeps your site fast and responsive.

Pro tip: The HubSpot WordPress plugin is a CRM, sales, and marketing WordPress plugin designed to abound your business organization improve.

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The plugin and its included features (CRM, Alive Conversation, Forms, Analytics, and Electronic mail Marketing) are free.

Paid HubSpot plans start at $fifty per month and included additional functionality and features. Equally your business grows, yous may need to build more custom reports or increase your advertisement spending, for example. In that case, y'all tin can check out HubSpot's upgrade options.

2. All in I SEO

All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is a consummate SEO plugin and toolkit for WordPress. Over two,000,000+ professionals apply this plugin to improve their website search ratings and unlock maximum traffic. You tin start with the WordPress SEO setup wizard, which helps you automatically choose the all-time SEO settings for your specific website and industry.

And in less than 10 minutes, yous tin easily set up up advanced SEO features such as XML sitemaps, optimized search advent, SEO keywords, schema markup, and much more. Plus, the SEO audit checklist volition analyze your entire website for errors and provide you with actionable insights to better your on-page SEO.

AIOSEO offers a free and premium version of the plugin. The free plugin comes with everything you demand to better your site's SEO. The premium versions include other powerful features like a redirection manager, 404 fault tracking, and an image SEO module.

3. Yoast SEO

Merely creating and publishing quality content isn't enough — yous have to optimize it for search engines to rank and attract new visitors. The Yoast SEO plugin is specifically designed to help you better your on-folio SEO to drive more organic traffic to your site.

Whether you lot want to create a catchy championship, optimize your featured snippets, or rank for specific keywords, Yoast'due south robust range of functionality, including a snippet preview, internal linking tool, and readability and SEO analysis, automates and simplifies the optimization process for you.

At that place'due south a gratis and premium version of this plugin. The premium version unlocks even more features, including a redirect managing director and automatic internal linking suggestions. With over 135 1000000 downloads, it'south the near downloaded SEO plugin.

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iv. Wordfence Security

Wordfence is 1 of the most comprehensive WordPress security solutions bachelor. It includes a malware scanner that quickly alerts you nigh security issues and an endpoint firewall to prevent attacks on your site. It also provides real-time visibility into traffic and hack attempts on your website and ii-factor authentication, among a suite of additional features, to protect your site.

There's a gratuitous and premium version. The premium version includes more features, including real-fourth dimension firewall dominion and malware signature updates and IP blacklists. With over 3 million active installations, Wordfence Security is the most popular WordPress firewall and security scanner.

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five. Elementor

If you're a not-coder, you lot can still create the WordPress site of your dreams by using a page builder plugin similar Elementor.

Elementor is a visual elevate-and-drop page architect with advanced blueprint capabilities. With this page builder, you can cull from hundreds of templates and then customize them with Elementor's mobile editing to create beautiful and responsive pages. Elementor comes with dozens of widgets so that you can hands add buttons, images, carousels, and headlines, among other elements, to your pages.

Information technology's complimentary but you can upgrade to the premium programme for more templates, widgets, blitheness effects, and more.

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6. UpdraftPlus

With UpdraftPlus, y'all'll never have to worry about manual back-ups once more. You tin apply this tool to back-up your files straight to Dropbox or Google Drive, among other deject platforms, and restore them with a unmarried click. That means if the day comes when your site gets hacked, your server crashes, or something goes wrong with an update, you know your website — plus all its related files and databases — are safe.

There'south a free and premium version available. UpdraftPlus Premium unlocks even more deject storage options, including OneDrive and Azure, and comes with more features, including incremental backups and database encryption. With over ii 1000000 active installs, it is the most popular scheduled backup plugin.

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vii. WP Rocket

WP Rocket is a powerful caching plugin that offers a robust range of features, including enshroud preloading, GZIP pinch, Google Fonts optimization, and DNS prefetching, to speed upwardly your WordPress site. What sets WP Rocket apart from other speed optimization plugins is that it begins working correct out of the box once installed and activated on your site.

WP Rocket is a premium plugin with plans starting at $49 per month.

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If y'all only install these six plugins, you'll be in skillful shape. These tools volition help you ameliorate your site's lead generation, SEO, design, security, and speed.

Notwithstanding, if yous have the time and resources to manage more plugins, then you can keep to extend the functionality of your site to ameliorate come across the needs of your visitors and back-end users. Let'due south check out some of the most popular plugins beneath.

All-time WordPress Plugins

Some WordPress users wonder if there's such a thing equally installing "also many" plugins on their site. The truth is that your site's functioning depends more on the quality than on the quantity of plugins on your site. If they don't follow WordPress's coding standards or aren't regularly updated, then they can wearisome down or even interruption your site.

Rather than try to stay below some arbitrary number, just make certain every plugin yous install adds a feature that enhances the visitor feel on your site and isn't merely absurd.

Below nosotros'll look at some of the most downloaded and highly rated plugins in the market. From optimizing images to integrating avant-garde analytics, each can add together valuable functionality to your site.

8. MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights created this plugin to make it easy to connect your WordPress site with Google Analytics. Before this plugin, you had to either hire a developer or learn to add Google Analytics code in various different areas of your WordPress theme to set up this integration. With MonsterInsights, you can prepare Google Analytics correct inside your WordPress dashboard without a programmer or whatsoever lawmaking required.

In that location is a gratuitous version of the plugin that will provide you with all of the basic tracking features you lot need. Simply, the premium version offers even more than powerful insights such as data on top landing pages, pop products, course conversions, and much more. It also comes with a congenital-in headline analyzer so yous can write effective SEO headlines that drive traffic and clicks.

MonsterInsights seamlessly integrates with Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4. You tin can connect to whichever version you're running, or connect to both at the aforementioned fourth dimension using the dual tracking characteristic.

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9. Jetpack plugin

If you want to install as few plugins equally possible, start with Jetpack. Jetpack is a powerful all-in-ane plugin that helps your site with traffic generation, SEO, security, site backups, content creation, and community edifice and date. With this tool, you can see your site stats at a glance, automatically share new posts to social media, protect your site from fauna force attacks, and more than.

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With over 53 meg downloads, Jetpack is the second most pop plugin of all time. At that place's a free version, but you can upgrade to a Personal, Professional person or Premium membership.

10. Smush

Smush is WPMU DEV's image optimization plugin for WordPress. You tin optimize every image you lot've e'er added to your site with i-click (every bit long as they're 5MB or less in size). Since paradigm files tend to be bloated with information that isn't needed, optimizing and compressing your site'due south images with Smush is an constructive and easy way to speed upwards your site.

Smush is gratis to download from the WordPress directory. There is a pro version available for those looking to optimize an unlimited number of images upward to 32MB. WP Smush Pro plans start at $7 per month.

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xi. Akismet Anti-Spam

Akismet Anti-Spam offers excellent spam protection for your WordPress site. By checking comments and contact form submissions against a spam database, this tool prevents your website from publishing malicious content. That style, you lot're but responding to your loyal readers and not spambots.

This plugin is complimentary, though you can upgrade to premium plans starting at $5 per month for advanced stats and priority support. With more than than 82 million downloads, Akismet is the nigh popular plugin of all time.

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12. Monarch plugin

Monarch is a premium WordPress plugin that can help you increase your social shares and followers. With this tool, you tin create a custom set of social media share buttons and follow buttons. In addition to letting y'all choose from dozens of social networks and profiles, it as well offers many options for the placement and design of your buttons.

This plugin also provides an overview of your social media performance. In the Monarch dashboard, you'll find your all-time stats (total number of shares, follows, and likes); your day, week, month, and yr stats; your highest performing posts; and private mail stats.

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To use Monarch likewise as a suite of other tools by Elegant Themes, you'll have to purchase a membership for $89 per year or lifetime access for one-time fee of $249.

13. LifterLMS

Let's say yous want to add together or sell online courses on your WordPress site. In that case, y'all'd apply a learning management arrangement (LMS) plugin like LifterLMS.

LifterLMS lets yous manage all aspects of your online courses — from administration to documentation to reporting — right within your WordPress dashboard. With this tool, you tin create an unlimited number of courses, generate coupons, contain quizzes into your curriculum, and keep track of everything from refunds to membership orders.

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The core plugin is costless, but you lot can add together more functionality by purchasing individual add together-ons or bundles of add-ons.

14. ThirstyAffiliates

If y'all are looking to monetize your site with affiliate links while edifice trust with your audition, you'll want to consider installing an affiliate link management plugin similar ThirstyAffiliates. With ThirstyAffiliates, you tin can cloak your affiliate links with a few clicks of your mouse. Yous can too manage, categorize, and customize these links correct in your WordPress dashboard.

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ThirstyAffiliates has a free and pro version with more advanced features, including link scheduling and URL shortening. Paid plans start at $49 per month.

fifteen. Envira Gallery

Envira Gallery helps you create responsive photo and video galleries for your WordPress site. Yous can organize your photos into albums, brandish your image thumbnails on multiple pages, and share your images on social media networks — all without any coding.

There's a lite version of the plugin available for free in the WordPress directory. Premium plans start at $29 and include advanced features for creating dedicated gallery pages, importing images from a Dropbox business relationship, and more.

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Nosotros've discussed many freemium and premium plugins. Now nosotros'll look at some free plugins y'all can download to see specific needs on your site without spending more of your budget.

Free WordPress Plugins

Let's say you're only taking your business online and want to keep costs low. The skillful news is that there are over 55,000 complimentary plugins that you can download from the WordPress directory to customize your site.

However, because free plugins do non come with warranties or guaranteed back up, make sure that a plugin has been recently updated and has good reviews before installing it on your site. Below let's look at a some highly-rated free plugins.

xvi. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a flexible plugin that enables yous to ready up an ecommerce store in minutes. With this tool, y'all can hands create production, cart, and checkout pages. You can as well accept a variety of payment methods and offer different aircraft options, including free and flat rate shipping.

WooCommerce also comes with built-in sorting options and taxonomies so that customers tin can filter products by price, newness, popularity, ratings, categories, tags, and other attributes to discover exactly what they're looking for.

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17. Google XML Sitemaps

Using a sitemap plugin will aid ensure your posts get indexed faster by Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other major search engines.

Because Google XML Sitemaps supports all page types and custom URLs, you can apply this plugin to create special XML sitemaps that aid search engine crawlers empathize the structure of your site and think it more efficiently. Google XML Sitemaps allows you lot to set specific pages for priority indexation and automatically informs search engines about new posts and pages.

With more than than one meg downloads, this is one of the nigh popular sitemap plugins for WordPress.

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18. Redirection

If you lot run a WordPress site, yous don't want to take chances losing visitors or damaging your site'south SEO considering of cleaved links. Redirection is a free redirect plugin that can help you handle these errors without having to manually modify them. With Redirection, y'all can easily create and manage 301 redirections and keep track of 404 errors.

With over ane million agile installations, Redirection is the well-nigh popular redirect manager for WordPress.

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Enhance Your Site with Plugins

Whether yous want to add together forms to your site, automatically compress and reduce your images, or monitor your traffic for suspicious action, plugins tin add or extend the functionality of your WordPress site. This can help you lot conceptualize and encounter the needs of your consumers today and in the futurity.

Editor'southward note: This post was originally published in March 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Originally published Feb 18, 2021 7:00:00 AM, updated Jan 17 2022

How To Use Wordpress Plugins,

Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/website/wordpress-plugins

Posted by: covingtonalivink1991.blogspot.com

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