The primary purpose of WordPress plugins is to expand WordPress functionality. Just by installing and activating a plugin you can add new features to WordPress site without any coding. There are thousands of free and paid plugins built for different purposes: from social media sharing to security. Thus, you will surely find a plugin that fits your needs.
Installing WordPress plugins is an easy task even for a beginner. Free and freemium plugins are available on WordPress.org plugin directory. Just like themes, these can be installed by using the inbuilt WordPress installer. To install a WordPress plugin press the Add New button under Plugins and enter the name of the plugin you want to install in the search field. Hit Install and then Activate button.
There are thousands of premium (paid) WordPress plugins which cannot be installed from the official WordPress plugin directory. If you purchased a premium plugin, you would have to manually upload it to WordPress. The process is quite similar to themes installation. To proceed, press the Add New button under Plugins and hit Upload Plugin. Now select a plugin archive and upload it. Finally, install and activate the plugin.
Essential WordPress Plugins
There are so many WordPress plugins – it could be hard to choose the right one. In fact, many of the plugins serve the same purpose, for example, there are dozens of WordPress caching plugins. That is why we decided to list the best WordPress plugins that are essential for every WordPress blog.
Google XML Sitemaps - This plugin will automatically generate XML site maps for better search engine optimization. It’s easy to use and update it regularly.
Yoast SEO - Probably the most popular SEO plugin for WordPress. It will help you improve the search engine optimization. From meta tags to writing suggestions – Yoast SEO plugin has it all.
Wordfence Security - This plugin will keep your WordPress safe from hackers and malware. It has firewall and malware scanner modules which are super useful.
Contact Form 7 - Simple but very powerful WordPress contact form plugin. Create any contact or even lead generation forms with this plugin.
It’s not recommended to clog Wordpress with dozens of plugins as it can decrease site’s performance. Keep your WordPress clean by installing only essential plugins and delete the ones you are not using.
You can add just about any functionality to WordPress with plugins. The WordPress Plugin Directory is a repository of free plugins that have been (somewhat) vetted. There are currently more than 40,000 plugins in the WordPress directory, so there are a lot of options.
Free vs. Premium WordPress Plugins
As we just mentioned, there are tons of WordPress plugins available for free download from the WordPress.org Plugin Directory. There are also premium or paid WordPress plugins.
Why would you want to pay for a plugin? Well, there are several reasons:
• While there are thousands of plugins available for free from the plugin directory, paid plugins usually offer a full time support staff and developers that work on maintaining the security and compatibility of plugins with the latest version of WordPress, as well as with other themes and plugins.
• Most of the time, plugins play nicely with the core of WordPress and with other plugins, but sometimes a plugin’s code will get in the way of another plugin, causing compatibility issues. With a paid plugin, it’s just nice to know you have support staff that can help you out if anything goes wrong.