
WordPress offers thousands of plugins for your website. For a given function, you can find numerous plugins. Picking the right one can be a difficult task. Not all plugins are going to help you. And not all are going to serve the purpose. Therefore, in this blog post, we are going to help you to choose the best plugin for your WordPress site. Here are the things to look for while choosing a WordPress plugin.
Check Star Ratings
This is might look oblivious, but trust us, star ratings can reveal a lot about a WordPress plugin. These ratings are given by the ex-users or present users. It tells the ground reality of a plugin. If you are confused between a couple of similar plugins, then pick the one which has the highest star rating. Just in case, if you are new and don’t know how to check star rating, go to the plugin page and click on the description. You will find the star rating of the plugin under the description tab. Install plugins, which have more than a four-star rating. Anything under four, may not be safe or productive.
Read Reviews
Reading reviews is one of the easiest methods to do online research on a given plugin. Reviews will help you explore pretty much everything about a plugin. The best thing is that you will know whether a plugin will be useful or not before installing it. Information and knowledge obtained via reviews will surely help you to make the better decisions. Before coming to any conclusion, make sure that you read several reviews, including positive ones and the negative ones. Here are the things which reviews will help you discover:
● Positive points.
● Drawbacks.
● Persisting issues or difficulty faced.
● Useful insights.
● Safety concerns and many more.
Active Installations
Solely depending on the star rating or reviews is not a good idea. You need to check every single aspect of a plugin. Here the number of active installations is another important aspect. The credibility of a plugin largely depends on the number of active installations. More active installations imply that the plugin is trusted among the WordPress community. In other words, you can trust what numerous people have already trusted.
You can find the total number of active installations under the description tab. To be on a safer side, avoid installing a free plugin under one thousand active installations.
Check out Compatibility & Updates
There are two main purposes of regularly updating a plugin. First, it improves security and safety. Second, frequent updates make it more compatible. Furthermore, regular updates reflect the active involvement of a developer. Therefore, avoid installing plugins that are rarely updated because it might risk your website security. You can find out when the plugin was last updated or whether it is compatible, in the description tab.