A plugin represents a part of software containing several functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend the functionality of the WordPress website or add new features. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate perfectly with WordPress. In the WordPress community, there is a saying according to which: “there is a plugin for that”. The plugins help users to implement features to their website without knowing a single line of code. Nowadays, there are thousands of plugins available for free to download at the official WordPress plugin directory.
As a WordPress website administrator, you can install or uninstall plugins from the admin area, but you can also download and manually install them using an FTP client.
Although there are thousands of plugins available for free, paid plugins generally offer a full time support staff and developers that continuously work on maintaining the compatibility and security of plugins with the latest version of WordPress as well as with other plugins and themes. For this reason you should be careful when choosing which ones you want to install on your WordPress website. In spite of the fact that there are plugins that can do virtually anything, some are much higher quality than others.
In order to choose the right ones, we suggest you to ask yourself the following questions when choosing a plugin:
• The plugin is compatible with the latest version of WordPress?
• How long has it been since it was updated?
• Are users getting answers to their support questions?
• What type of rating does it have?
Therefore, if you want to easily improve the functionality of your WordPress website, all you need to do is take a stroll through the WordPress plugin directory in order to see all of the feasible ways plugins can enhance or extend your website.