This post was written to accompany a talk about WordPress plugins at the WordPress Memphis User Group, which meets on the first Thursday of every month.
What are plugins
Chances are, if you’ve been using WordPress, you’re aready familiar with plugins but, if you aren’t entirely sure what they are, how they work, or even if you’ve never ever heard of them, don’t worry. The WordPress Codex describes plugins as “ways to extend and add to the functionality that already exists in WordPress.” Two plugins are included with every new installation of by default – akismet and hello dolly – but there are around 43 thousand plugins for WordPress that can do just about anything you can think of. We’ll learn how to find quality plugins, install and activate them, and finally, get a little advanced and learn what’s going on behind the scenes and how plugins work.
Finding plugins
Most plugins, with the exception of some premium plugins that have to be downloaded from a website and manually installed, are included in the WordPress Plugins Directory at wordpress.org. This is the best place to go to discover plugins and get some important details that will help you make good decisions about which plugins to use. Before you install a plugin, you should refer to the plugin directory to find out who the author is, how often it is updated, how many sites are actively using it, and how it is rated by the community. In most cases, you should void plugins that haven’t been updated in a long time or that have a low number of active installs.
[pic ratings section of plugin]
Installing and Activating Plugins
There are two ways to install plugins from the plugins page in the wordpress admin section. The easiest way to install a new plugin is to click ‘Add New’ at the top of the plugins page, select a plugin , and click install. For plugins that are not available in the plugin directory, you may need to install them manually from a file on your computer. To install a plugin manually, click the ‘Upload Plugin’ button on the ‘Add Plugin’ page and choose the file from your computer – the plugin will need to be a zip file.
Once you have installed a plugin, it will need to be activated before you can use it. To activate a plugin, simply click activate. You can also de-activate and remove plugins from the plugins screen in the wp-admin section
Configuring plugins
Most plugins come with settings that can be changed from the wp admin section and will add a link to the menu. Sometimes, you might not see the new item in the admin menu so you can click on settings under the plugin description on the plugins admin page. Some plugins are very simple and have few or no options. Others have multiple settings pages with lots of complex options.
What happens behind the scenes
What really happens when you install a plugin? WordPress consists of a bunch of files on a server and a database. When you install a plugin, a folder containing the plugin files is placed in the wp-content/plugins directory on your server.
You can access your plugins directory with an ftp client like filezilla which you can download for free. If you haven’t done this before, your hosting provider (godaddy or dreamhost) should provide instructions for accessing your files with filezilla and may even allow you to access the files right from your browser via your hosting control panel.
Once you’ve connected to your server via ftp you can navigate to /wp-content/plugins and see where your plugins have been installed. You can even drag and drop a plugin directory you downloaded from the repository here (make sure to unzip it first)
What’s in a plugin
Now that you’ve seen that a plugin is nothing more than a folder with a bunch of files in it, let’s see what’s really in there.
Every plugin will have a php file in the main directory, usually with the same name as the plugin, with some commented out details at the top. This is the only file required by the plugin and those comments are the file header that includes the name of the plugin, the description, the author name and some other info.
Even if the file header is the only content in the file and that is the only file in the plugin, as long as the comment block is complete, we should be able to activate the plugin.
So, What Now
Once you know simple it is to write a plugin, you can start extending WordPress’s functionality and adding your own features. If you have ever added something to your theme’s functions.php file that you would like to work even if you change themes, guess what? Now you know where to put it. Plugins don’t have to be complicated; they can just include a few lines. By putting your code in plugins, you keep it contained and separate from your theme so it won’t be lost if you switch. Finally, in the spirit of WordPress, you can share your code with millions of other people who might want to use it by publishing your plugin to the WordPress plugin directory.
Further Reading
If you want to jump right in to plugin development, I recommend Getting Started with WordPress Plugin Development: The Ultimate Guide from WPMUdev
Plugin Recommendations
Most WordPress users will have at least one or two plugin recommendations. These are a few plugins that I install on almost every WordPress site I work on. You can read more about them in the plugin directory.