Chapter 1: Introducing WordPress Plugins
In This Chapter
Extending WordPress with plugins
Comparing plugins to themes
Finding plugins
Evaluating the trustworthiness of plugins
One of the most important features of WordPress is its support for plugins. With plugins, you can add new features, remove existing features, or change how specific features function. In other words, plugins allow you to tailor WordPress to meet your site’s needs.
Plugins can be very simple — for instance, a plugin might change the appearance of the Dashboard menu. Or they can also be very complex, accomplishing hefty tasks such as providing a complete e-commerce solution with product listings, a shopping cart, and payment processing.
To help you make use of plugins to customize your site, this chapter explores what plugins are and shows you how to find and use plugins.
Extending WordPress with Plugins
WordPress by itself is an amazing tool. The features built into WordPress are meant to be the ones that you’ll benefit from the most. All the desired site features that fall outside what is built in to WordPress ...
