What are WordPress plugins?

A plugin is a piece of software you add to WordPress to give it an ability it does not have on its own.

WordPress by itself publishes pages and posts. A plugin is what turns it into a shop, adds a contact form, takes bookings, builds pages by dragging blocks around, or improves how it appears in search results.

There are tens of thousands of free ones in the WordPress.org directory, which is what your Pressy searches when you install one. Others are sold directly by their makers and are uploaded rather than searched for.

Installed and active are different things

• Installed — the files are on your site. It does nothing yet.
• Active — it is switched on and running.

Deactivating a plugin stops it without deleting it, so your settings survive. Deleting removes the files, and usually the settings with them.

How many is too many

There is no number. Twenty small, well-written plugins can be lighter than one badly built page builder.

What actually costs you is what each plugin does on every page load — a plugin that queries the database on every visit is expensive, one that only runs in the admin is nearly free. If your site is slow, look at what is actually causing it rather than counting rows.

The ones worth having

• A caching or performance plugin, to work with the caching your Pressy already has.
• A backup plugin, only if you want copies somewhere we do not hold them. Your Pressy already backs itself up weekly.
• An SMTP plugin, if your site sends email — WordPress cannot send it reliably on its own.

Keeping them safe

An out-of-date plugin is the most common way a WordPress site gets broken into. Switch on auto-updates for the ones you trust, and delete the ones you are not using — an inactive plugin still has files on disk that can be attacked.