7 Best Advices to Pick a Right Plugin for WordPress

WordPress is the most popular CMS (content management system) around the world for developing blogs and websites. Its popularity is mainly due to easy to use features. It supports a huge list of plugins which are handy to extend the functionality. You can manage the social sharing option, email opt-in forms, SEO, security and many other things through the plugins.

As WordPress itself is an open source software, it also offers a free plugins’ directory to customize your blog or website. You can access the directory from here. There is a vast list of plugins for each feature you want for the WordPress. For a newbie, it becomes difficult to choose a right plugin.

If someone does not the follow the measures to choose a right plugin, it may cause the following opposite reactions to the WordPress:

• Slow down your site or blog
• May produce 500 error
• May crash your site or blog
• installation may get irresponsive
• The white screen of death may appear
• Any important feature may get affected

It is not easy to have a right plugin instantly that could provide the correct functionality. I would share some advises later in this post that will assist you in this task. Before going on them, I want to share my own experience with WordPress plugins. I wanted to create a landing page for a product. I have tried several plugins without reading their details on the WordPress. You would be familiar with the plugin download page in WordPress that offers several details about the plugin you are intended to download.

What I did wrong was- I did not go through the details and directly started installing the free page builder plugins one by one. It was looking fun as I was excited to create a landing page. Some of the free page builder plugins also offer to customize the layout of the simple blog posts. So, it had become more exciting to me. Everyone likes the freebies and I am in the same category.

This process ate my most of the times that day and at last, I found that my blog was not working well. One of my blog readers informed me about this issue. I was unable to access the “Add post” option.  It was not only limited to it. The home page of my blog was got turned into a blank page. I was unable to observe the things that were happening around my blog.

Some of the bloggers can easily relate with this situation who have passed through it.

First to all, I tried to be patient. In every difficulty, you must have patience. After only it, you may come to any solution. I did the same.

I asked for help to my friends and they were strived to get me the possible solutions. I spent one more day to revamp all the functionalities and features of my blog.

Through this process, I learned few things about plugin selection. I am sharing over here all the tips or advises that I consider now before installing any plugin on my blog.

Read the Description:

The description of any plugin does not take much time to read. It mostly contains the details about the working mechanism and feature of the plugin. Read all the points carefully and get to know what the plugin is all about.

Check for the Compatibility:

Some plugins in the WordPress directory define the required version and higher compatible version of the WordPress at which they work efficiently. You should check for the lowest required version and compatibility up to.

If you are getting a message related to compatibility issues, you should not install that plugin.

Check Ratings:

It is the less suggested factor for measuring the quality of a plugin. However, it may assist you in making a right selection. If a plugin is getting mostly more than 4 marks in ratings, it is a positive indication.

Download Count:

The number of downloads shows the popularity of a plugin. It is better to go with a plugin which has higher downloads. The higher downloads count is equally proportional to the higher users satisfaction.

Hit on the Stats Tab to look on to the download counts in last few days. It may be possible that a plugin which was being downloaded many times earlier would be getting more downloads now.

If, in the past few days, users are downloading a plugin frequently, then you can also go for the same plugin.

Reviews:

Reviews are the real user experiences. Each time when I decide to install a new plugin to my blog, I go to review first and do read all the reviews. If any of the reviews shares the bad experience with the plugin, I mostly avoid installation.

Last Update:

The frequency of updating a plugin is a direct indication of the efforts which are being made to escalate the quality level and offering a flawless plugin to the users. Try to catch-up a plugin with most recent update.

Manage Backup:

Thing that helped me a lot to revamp my blog was the WordPress backup. If it was not at that place, I might not able to get the blog in the same condition. For a non-technical person, using a backup plugin is the best option to get the best resolution in case any interruption occurred in the WordPress.

 Conclusion:

These are effective yet simple advises you every use can follow easily. These are not based on the official guide by WordPress. I have compiled this list as per my experience with the plugins. As I believe – by considering all above points, you can make safe your WordPress installation to a great extent. However, you should also make provisions on your own to make safe your blog or site.

After reading this post, if any kind of question arises in your mind, please ask in the comment section. I would love to answer all your queries.

If you want to get more information to keep safe the WordPress, read the below posts.

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