WordPress Beginner: Plugins

Name: WordPress Beginner: Plugins
Author: Chrissy Rey

Learn how to extend WordPress functionality with plugins

Preview the first lesson free — get full access to all 3 lessons.

Course: On-Demand

Hello, my name is Chrissy Ray and in these lessons you will learn about plug-ins. First, we'll talk about what plug-ins are and then we're going to look at how to install community plug-ins. And finally, we will look at how to install premium plug-ins. But first up, what are plug-ins? Plug-ins are extensions to the functionality of WordPress. If you look at a standard fresh WordPress installation like I've got here on the screen, you can see that you have a dashboard menu, posts, media, pages, comments, appearance, plug-ins, users, tools and settings. But notice there's nothing on here like e-commerce or forms or search engine optimization or anything like that. If you wanna add that functionality, you need to install a plugin. And if we look at the plugin screen right now, we can see that I do have a couple of plugins installed. These are plugins that are often installed by default with WordPress, and I usually delete them. You don't necessarily need them, but you would go to this plug-in screen to install additional plug-ins. But before we do that, I do wanna show you a couple of places that you can get plug-ins. One of them is the free WordPress plug-in repository which is at wordpress.org/plugins. And you can see here I've got lots of plugins. If I click on, "See all", it's going to give me many, many plugins. I've got 25 pages for block plugins, which is what I'm looking at right now. If I do a search for e-commerce, for example, you can see I get 51 pages worth of plug-ins. There's a lot of e-commerce plug-ins. If I do a search for SEO, search engine optimization, I get lots of plug-ins for that as well. So these are all free plug-ins and you can see in some cases that, like for example I've got the Yoast SEO plug-in and they are free. But if you look at some of these plugins, let me scroll down a little bit here. You'll see that you can also get premium support. So while the plugin is free, they do encourage you to upgrade to a premium support version to allow you to get some extra help and extra functionality, extra features in the plugin. So those are referred to as freemium. So they are free, but they want you to upgrade to premium to get that additional support. Now, in addition to the WordPress plug-in repository, the free community plug-ins, you can also purchase commercial plug-ins and those are not free, those are always paid for. And Gravity Forms is a really good example of a premium plugin. So with Gravity Forms, you can purchase it and then download and install it on WordPress and you will then be given the option of adding forms to your website. So if you go back to the dashboard, you can see there are no forms there but I can add a forms menu by installing Gravity Forms or Ninja Forms or WP Forms. There's lots of other forms plugins out there. So again, WordPress plugins are extensions to the functionality of WordPress and you need to install them in order to activate their functionality within WordPress. Thanks for watching.

Beginner Provider : Chrissy Rey 3 Lessons · 20m in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese

Course Description

WordPress is great at doing basic content management with a default installation. However, it can’t do everything you might need for a successful and complete website. As a result, the WordPress developer community has created a wide range of extensions to WordPress functionality. Those extensions, known as plugins, can add functionality like e-commerce, memberships, search engine optimization (SEO), event calendars, online courses, security monitoring, optimization, and much more to a WordPress website. Some plugins are available for free, others require a paid license, and some fall somewhere in between with a “freemium” model.

In the WordPress Plugins module, you will learn how to extend WordPress functionality with plugins. First, you will learn what plugins are and the difference between free, “freemium,” and premium plugins. Next, you will learn how to evaluate free plugins and install them from the WordPress dashboard. Finally, you will learn how to install downloaded premium plugins.

What You'll Learn

Evaluate WordPress plugins, including the difference between free, "freemium," and premium plugins
Install community plugins from the WordPress dashboard
Install downloaded premium plugins
Extend WordPress functionality with plugins for features such as e-commerce, memberships, SEO, and more
Assess free plugins before adding them to a WordPress website

Key Takeaways

A default WordPress installation handles basic content management but cannot do everything a complete website might need.
Plugins are extensions created by the WordPress developer community to add functionality such as e-commerce, memberships, SEO, event calendars, online courses, security monitoring, and optimization.
Plugins come in different licensing models: free, premium (paid license), and "freemium" that falls in between.
Community plugins can be evaluated and installed directly from the WordPress dashboard, while premium plugins are installed after being downloaded.

Frequently Asked Questions

What will I learn in this WordPress Plugins module?

You will learn what plugins are and the difference between free, "freemium," and premium plugins, how to evaluate free plugins and install them from the WordPress dashboard, and how to install downloaded premium plugins.

What are WordPress plugins?

Plugins are extensions created by the WordPress developer community that add functionality such as e-commerce, memberships, SEO, event calendars, online courses, security monitoring, and optimization to a WordPress website.

Are all WordPress plugins free?

No. Some plugins are available for free, others require a paid license, and some fall somewhere in between with a "freemium" model.

What topics do the lessons cover?

The lessons cover What are Plugins?, Installing Community Plugins, and Installing Premium Plugins.

What skills does this course cover?

It covers skills including WordPress, WordPress Admin, WordPress REST API, software modules, extension methods, and Cordova plugins.