What I’ve Learned About Plugins
Plugins are a great way to add new features to your website without having to know how to code them yourself. However, it is important that you use safe plugins because you are allowing them to enter your website. If you download bad plugins, they can crash your site and cause privacy and security concerns.
WordPress plugins should be sourced from the WordPress plugin library. You can download them directly from the WP library and install them from your dashboard. For this class, all of the plugins we use are free and come from the WordPress.org plugin directory.
There are several things I look at before installing a plugin. It is important to look at the reviews, the number of reviews, and the number of active installations. I also look at when the plugin was last updated and whether it is compatible with my version of WordPress. If a plugin has not been updated in a long time, has very few users, or has bad reviews, I would probably find another option. I would also be cautious of plugins from developers that do not provide much information or support.
There are many WP communities and blogs with peer reviewed and recommended plugins. This is another good way to find trusted plugins and learn what other WordPress users have had success with. You can also find recommendations through tutorials, developer websites, online forums, and other people who manage WordPress websites. You should still be checking the aforementioned parameters to ensure that the plugin is a good fit for your website. Just because someone recommends a plugin does not automatically mean it is safe or the best choice for your site.
For my additional plugin I chose Reading Time WP. In my professional job, I help manage several websites, one of them being a newspaper’s website. With a recent update, we now have a “read time” block that has been a great addition. For this class and my blog, I chose to also implement a similar feature via the Reading Time WP plugin.
Reading Time WP will allow visitors to see how long it will take to read my blogs and pick and choose what is best for them in that moment, whether it is a quick read or a sit-down moment. Some of my blog posts are longer than others, so I think this is especially helpful for my website.
I thought about choosing Worth The Read or Read Meter, but when I compared my options, they did not have nearly as many active installations and were not as recently updated. That made me concerned that they may not be maintained as actively. Reading Time WP gave me the simple feature I wanted without adding a lot of things I did not need. It benefits my visitors by giving them more information before they start reading, and it benefits me because the reading time is automatically calculated instead of something I have to add to every post myself.