One of the great things about having your own WordPress site is the huge number of plugins available to you. A WordPress plugin is a small software program written to either change or add to the way WordPress works by integrating or “plugging into” the main WordPress program.  These plugins can do everything from add a small functionality to just one part of your blog to change the overall appearance and function of whole parts of your website.  There really is no limit to what they can do and there are thousands of plugins that have been written for WordPress.  The official WordPress.org repository has over 3,500 and growing and is located at this link.  In addition there are many other plugins that are available outside of the official WordPress site.

Because of the open nature of the WordPress software, people can design WordPress plugins to do almost anything they need.  Many of these plugins were designed by people who just wanted to have some additional feature that was not available with the core WordPress program.   Others have drastically changed the way certain parts of WordPress function.  After designing and implementing the plugin on their own sites, plugin authors often discover that hundreds or even thousands of other WordPress users want the same thing.

How can you navigate the wealth of WordPress plugins to decide which ones you might want to try?  Generally the first plugins on a website are installed as a result of recommendations from other people, or installed as a part the initial WordPress installation by a website services provider like myself.  Not surprisingly I am often asked which plugins I recommend to people.  Of course there are as many answers to that as there are websites, but I do have a few that I recommend everyone at least try and that I include as part of my WordPress installation service.

Stay tuned for future posts where I will cover the plugins I consider essential for any WordPress site.  As always, feel free to comment below or contact me directly if you have any WordPress questions.