Chapter 3: Configuring and Using Plugins
In This Chapter
Exploring activate-and-go plugins
Discovering settings pages
Using widgets and shortcodes
The types of features offered by WordPress plugins are extremely diverse. Similarly, the ways of interacting with plugins are also extremely diverse. Some plugins don’t have an interface and can be activated or deactivated only, while others provide one or more settings screens to control how the plugins behaves. Other plugins offer widgets and shortcodes (short, easy-to-remember codes used to execute PHP functions) used to add new features to sidebars and content.
This chapter digs into the topic of how to interact with plugins. Although this is a big topic, the examples in this chapter prepare you for the different ways of interacting with plugins.
Exploring Activate-and-Go Plugins
Certain plugins are easy to use because they don’t have any settings or features to interact with — I call them activate-and-go plugins. You simply activate them, and they do what they are intended to do.
As with WordPress plugins as a whole, activate-and-go plugins offer a wide variety of features. The following list offers a sampling of activate-and-go ...
