This applies even to your business. With the changing times, you need to keep yourself updated constantly. Trends come and go in a flash, and you need to keep your business from falling behind. Similarly, with new features and quirks dropping in the market every day, you cannot afford to present yourself or your business with an outdated website. And hiring a new developer now and then is both expensive and too much of a hassle. But if you have your website with the WordPress, you’ve been covered.

WordPress is a platform that allows you to create and manage your websites for free. If you don’t have coding knowledge and skill, you can choose from the provided themes. It also offers you plugins to keep your website updated with new features. If you don’t know about WordPress, let’s go through that quickly.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is a free-to-use, open-source CSM platform that is written in PHP and is paired with a MariaDB or MySQL database. In other words, WordPress is a simple way to create your blog or website. You can also say that WordPress is a popular online platform that helps you to create and manage your website without having any knowledge about design or coding.

WordPress initially started as a blogging platform. It lets you focus on the important aspects of your website while it takes care of creating it. Over the years, its CMS has been developed to support various kinds of websites. Online stores,  affiliate websites, membership sites, woocommerce auction sites  and media publications are just a drop in the river of the diverse website list.

Over 30% of all websites currently active on the internet are powered or associated with WordPress.

What is a Plugin?

WordPress has a variety of plugins available. When you create a website with WordPress, you have an array of plugins at your disposal. You are free to choose from this varied range of plugins and help yourself customize your website according to your need. Plugins extend existing features and add additional functions.

They are available for free as well as premium. Even the premium ones range differently, from low costing to expensive. If you are not able to find the right plugin for yourself, you can ask a professional WordPress plugin development company to make one for you.

Benefits of WordPress Plugins!

1. Available for Any Requirement

Plugins are essential tools for the non-coders to achieve their desired functionality on their website. A huge community of talented developers supports WordPress. This WP plugin development has facilitated you to choose from over 54,000 available plugins. Whatever you need from your website, a plugin will deliver it.

There are various types of plugins available. Contact forms, SEO optimization, integrated automated email marketing, scheduled and regular backups, membership, and live chat are just a few examples.

Develop a WooCommerce plugin, an e-commerce solution from WordPress allows safe and secure transactions on online shopping from your website. WooCommerce powers about 28% of all online stores. It has been a trusted tool, which has been proven by it’s over 30 million downloads.

2. Flexible with Your Changing Needs

When you need to add a feature to your website, you don’t need to hire a developer or overhaul your website. Just add the required plugin. The variety of plugins available will help you create a website with the features that you want. WordPress plugins even let you modify them and lets you add your functions to that.

In case you are not able to find the desired plugin or face the plugin bloat, you always have an option of custom WordPress plugin development.

3. Easy on Your Pocket

Hiring a web developer to customize your website is not cheap. It is also a time taking process, and you may not get the desired results out of it.

Plugins are free tools offered by WordPress to equip your website with unique and needed features. There are also premium plugins. These premium plugins can be expensive or light on your pocket, depending on their price. They also have a basic or demo version available for free. So you can use that to check if it is the right plugin for you. However, they are still inexpensive compared to hiring a developer.

4. Easy to Compare

It’s challenging to find the correct developer for your website. Skilled developers will deliver good quality, but are expensive. Less skilled developers, on the other hand, are comparatively less expensive, but there is no guarantee on the outcome. Besides, it’s hard to identify skilled developers from the less skilled ones, let alone determine if their skills match your requirements.

However, it is different from the plugins. Plugins have all the necessary information available about them. Hence they are easy to compare. A plugin with a thousand active installations will have fewer issues compared to the one with a hundred active installations. A popular plugin will have all the issues identified and possibly already been rectified. There is a reason that many people are trusting it.

You can also know when a certain plugin was updated. A plugin that hasn’t been updated for years is outdated, and a new plugin may still have unrectified issues. It is necessary to check the plugin version and all available information to make the right choice.

5. Easy to Install

Plugins are really easy to install. There are two basic ways to add a plugin. The first one is to visit ‘Dashboard.’ Look for the ‘Plugin’ section and select ‘add new.’ There you can look for the one you need from the ‘search’ section. After you have made your choice, you can ‘install’ it and let it download. In a summary, Dashboard -> Plugins -> Add New -> Search -> Install -> Activate.

Or

You can choose one from the plugin directory or a seller’s website and upload the zip file. You can activate or deactivate an installed plugin via the admin panel.

Finally

WordPress provides you a lot of plugins equipped with unique features. These plugins have over 1 billion total downloads worldwide. However, each plugin uses its coding that may not be compatible with your website resulting in dropped performance. This is called the plugin bloat. And a popular plugin does not mean that it is the right plugin for you. So keep looking and make the right choice.

Author Bio :- I’m Jigar Shah. Web Developer, Editor and Contributor at WPWeb – a WordPress Development Company in India . Helping global businesses with unique and engaging tools for their business.