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Sometimes the best plug in for what you need is free.

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There might be a light version of a plug in that has all the functionality you need for your project

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or a developer or team of developers who routinely release and update their free plugins.

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This video is about how to find and evaluate the plugins you find in the free WordPress plugin repository.

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Let's start by looking at the Wordpress plugin repository at Wordpress dot org slash plugins.

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We've been here before in one of our earlier chapters when we were first setting up our brochure site

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with a few free plug ins with forty thousand six 630 plug ins inside the repository.

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It's not that easy to narrow down what you need and what are the best plugins in the repository.

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One of the things that WordPress did recently and automatic The company behind Wordpress is that they

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they started reporting how many active installs there are on each of these plugins as opposed to how

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many downloads have ever happened.

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That shows us that plugins will climb to the top which have more and more active installs as opposed

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to just original downloads.

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And if the plugin has been abandoned then that number wouldn't have gotten any smaller.

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There's a few things we're looking for within a plug in.

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And if I load the acus met plug in from automatic and wordpress this is a comment spam filter plugin

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that ships with wordpress it comes with every press WordPress org download we would look for in any

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plug in we're going to evaluate a few different things.

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Let's look at the number of active installs.

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When it was last updated what version of Wordpress it's compatible to and what version of Wordpress

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it requires.

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Although that's not quite as important.

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Hopefully you're only using the latest version of Wordpress and you keep your clients and your sites

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updated.

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You can also look below at the ratings and look at the total ratings and you can rate how much value

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you place on these star ratings by how many ratings that it's coming from maybe how many one star ratings

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there are compared to five star ratings.

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You can look through the authors and see which developers are involved in the maintenance and the original

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programming of the plug in.

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You can click through to their profile page on WordPress dot org.

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Matt Mullenweg one of the original founders and inventors of WordPress.

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He's got several plug ins that he's involved in.

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And you can do a little bit of research on the plug in developers or development teams by going through

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those links there.

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You can also look at the support page within WordPress dot org.

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These tabs across the top of the content area but below the image and the tagline of the plug in can

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give you a lot of good information under support you can get an idea of whether the developers of this

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plugin actually support it and reply to these posts which are questions and topics by the public who's

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using this plug in whichever plug in it is.

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Let's go back to the Wordpress or plug ins page and do a search for a common type of plug in contact

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form.

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Here you can see that there are a whole slew of contact form plug ins available for free in the Wordpress

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plugin repository.

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Now if you go through and browse them the first thing I usually look at are how many active installs

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does it have.

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And I can see that I've got a hundred thousand here on the contact form seven honeypot that the contact

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form 7 which we used in our brochure site has more than a million active installs.

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Here's 8000.

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Not bad.

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I'm looking at 10 right here 40000 30000.

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So if we only pick from the ones that have the most active installs.

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The second thing I'd look at is the last updated date this contact form 7 pop up response plug in has

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last been updated 2 years ago.

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Not so good.

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Not one that I might actually use this plugin is also only compatible up to 3 9 that 12.

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Not even for version 4 of WordPress.

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This one is a contact form 7 pop up response for when somebody hits the submit button.

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It will display a validation message like your message was sent successfully in a pop up interesting

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tidbit coming from our last video on the end Vado marketplace.

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I just got a free version of a plugin that does this exact thing pop up messages for a contact form

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7 for those validation messages.

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As one of their freebies I think it costs 17 bucks or something.

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Anyway if you do click through to a plug in that's been updated more than two years ago it will even

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give you a warning at the top.

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The plug in has not been updated in more than two years and it may not be supported by the developer

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or the development team.

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Let's look at another category of plug ins.

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We've done this before.

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For Google Analytics there's another group of plug ins where there's a lot of different plug ins in

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this plug in type again a lot of them have thousands or hundreds of thousands of active installs.

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And those are the ones that I would choose.

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I know that we used Google Analytics by monster insights in our earlier video.

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We also have the Google Analytics editor which if we open up the Google Analytics later is powered by

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the same company that brings you sumo me which is a great social networking and social marketing development

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company and we get into using them later in this course.

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But this is an example of an excellent plug in.

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That's got plenty of installs.

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They spend their own time and money keeping it updated compatible with the latest version of Wordpress

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because they hope that by using this plug in you'll also look at their other paid offerings.

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This is how a lot of the greatest plugins inside the plugin repository get support from development

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teams.

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There are either light versions that have a limited set of functions or not every function is powered

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and they also might have ADD ons that you can place if you look at the new commerce plug in which commerce

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is currently owned by automatic and is in the process of being brought into the core files of wordpress.

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But in any case it's still a plug in at this time.

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But you can see that there are tons of different wew add ons in the free plugin repository and there

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are also a lot of paid add ons from wew.

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The company itself so that they can give away their e-commerce plug in and hope that you'll buy some

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of the add ons that you need later.

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So there's nothing wrong with using a light version of a plug in as long as it gives you the functionalities

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that you need.

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It's usually supported by a development team that will keep it updated with updates in wordpress.

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Here's one that we're going to be able to experience in this course.

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The light version as well as the commercial pro version I have the pro version and I use it extensively

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with my own sites and with client work.

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This soliloquy slider plug in I do have it installed inside of W.P. of course dotcom in your students

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sandbox and we'll be playing with it later in this course.

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But Thomas Griffin here does offer a light version and it is an excellent plug in.

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It just doesn't come with every add on that you might want inside of a slider plug in.

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But it gives you a great free plug in.

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That's supported by a development team and it's updated often as Wordpress updates.

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One more thing you should know you don't necessarily have to go to the Wordpress dot org slash plug

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ins plug in directory or repository as we refer to it.

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But if you're within Wordpress and logged in if you go to plug ins and add new it's going to open all

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the same information as you can find in the Wordpress dot org plug in repository itself including if

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you click through to any of the plug in the title or the more details button.

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It will open up a modal window in front of your own WordPress installation.

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Pulling information from the Web site like the description and some of those tabs across the top the

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installation information and especially the ratings the reviews the contributors and their links as

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well as all this essential information when the plug in was last updated and what version it requires

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what it's compatible to and how many active installs.

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Then of course you can install it right into your Wordpress installation with the button right there.

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I've already got the latest version of acus met installed.

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But what if I wanted to install a bird jetpack by WordPress dotcom I could hit the install but now or

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look at more details first evaluate the plug in.

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Right within my wordpress dashboard and then I can scroll down and install.

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Now if I want in this video we briefly went over the criteria you should be using when evaluating a

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free plug in from the Wordpress repository.

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We looked at a few of the most popular plugin types and found a couple of the best and you saw how you

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can access and install plugins from the Wordpress plugin repository right inside any WordPress dashboard.

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Next we'll return to the locally hosted photography site we've been working with and do some assessments

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on plug in speed and performance