What is a Plugin? How Plugins are installed in WordPress?

A plugin is simply an extension or an add-on that extends the functionality of the website. There are plenty of plugins available for free download in WordPress repository, user can download them for free and use them for their own website to extend the website’s performance.

Most of the plugins are available for free, any user can use them for introducing new functions in their website. Suppose a user needs a contact form for his/her website then the user can search for a good form creating plugin in the WordPress repository and then install and activate. With the help of that plugin, user can place a contact form by just placing a short code on the page where he/she wants to display the contact form. No coding is required to create a contact form.

In this way, a wide variety of functions can be introduced into the website with the help of plugins. In other words, Plugins are a little piece of codes (or software) that adds to the main code of WordPress and extend the functions of WordPress. Hope you got an idea of plugins by now.

There are a lot of plugins that are available for some prices. User can pay for them and download the plugins. User can upload the downloaded plugins and activate them as usual.

• Use plugins that are simple and clean. Check installs count and star reviews prior to installing and activating the plugins.
• Don’t use more plugins, as they slow down the WordPress website that in-turn has great impact on the search engine rankings of the website.
• Install and activate only the necessary plugins, and if the plugins are of no use, then first deactivate and uninstall them.
• Some plugins may break the appearance of your website due to its improper coding. Try to avoid installing such plugins or else change the WordPress theme.

The installation process of plugins is quite simple and easy and it takes not more than 3 minutes.

• In order to carry out any work in WordPress, first the user needs to login to the dashboard of WordPress with Admin credentials (username and password). The login link is as follows –

https://yoursite.com/wp-login.php (here yoursite.com is your website)

• After successful login to the WordPress dashboard, the left side panel of WordPress have many options. Among those options, there is a option ‘Plugins‘ which the user has to select to check out the installed plugins and to install new plugins and to activate them.
• If a user wants to add a new plugin to the website, then he/she needs to click on ‘Add New‘ that is found under ‘Plugins’ option.

Plugins  >  Add New

• If the user wants to check what plugins are installed or if the user wants to activate or deactivate any plugin, then the user must navigate to ‘Installed Plugins‘ under ‘Plugins’ option.

Plugins  >  Installed Plugins

• When a user clicks on ‘Add New‘ plugin button, then a list of featured plugins will be displayed on the dashboard. The user can use the Search bar on the right side of the dashboard to find out the required plugin.
• If the user already have the plugin downloaded from somewhere else then the user can upload the plugin to the WordPress using ‘Upload Plugin‘ found on the top of the dashboard.

Plugins  >  Add New  >  Upload Plugin

• After searching for the required plugin, the user needs to click on ‘Install Now‘ button found on the right side of plugin name to install the plugin.

• After installing the plugin, the user needs to activate the plugin that can be done by clicking on ‘Activate Now‘ button found on the right side of plugin name.

WordPress Dashboard  >  Plugins  >  Installed Plugins  >  Search the Plugin and Activate It

• If the user wants to deactivate any plugin then the user have to navigate to ‘Installed Plugins’ under ‘Plugins’ option.

WordPress Dashboard  >  Plugins  >  Installed Plugins  >  Search the Plugin and Deactivate It

• If the user wants to uninstall the plugin, the same process of deactivating the plugin is followed which is then followed by uninstalling it by clicking on ‘Delete’ option.

WordPress Dashboard  >  Plugins  >  Installed Plugins  >  Deactivate  >  Delete