Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog, 2nd Edition

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PART III:USING PLUGINS WITH WORDPRESS

n WP-PageNavi (wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-pagenavi/) enhances the

page navigation feature. It includes several styling settings, but you need to add the

plugin’s template tag to your theme  les for it to work.

A FINAL CAVEAT: DO YOU REALLY NEED THAT PLUGIN?

It’s easy to get carried away with plugins and additional functionality overall when working

with WordPress.  ere is so much you can add, so many possibilities, and with the plugin

install a mere click away now that you can do it from your admin interface, it’s even harder to

resist.

But resist you should. For every feature and every plugin you add, you’ll bloat your install

some more. Plugins can really slow down your site. It’s not just the puny  les sitting in the

plugins folder; the problem is what they do to your database, and the number of access

requests and extra queries performed when you use them.

Don’t get me wrong, plugins are nice. Some of the coolest WordPress sites just wouldn’t be

possible without plugins, and the extensive nature of the platform is one of the reasons it is so

powerful and widely used.  e fact that there’s a whole chapter just talking about what plugins

you should look closer at, and teasing you with what you can do with them, certainly counts

for something!

Just don’t go overboard, that’s all I’m saying. Use plugins when you need them, but keep ...