 Good morning. Choosing and using plugins and it was just brought to my attention that the font might be a little too faded. So if you have some trouble seeing something, I'll clarify it. I'll be clarifying everything of course. But just let me know. First off, did everybody get one of those canteens we were giving away? You did not? All right. Sean, my colleague here will get you one right now. So we're going to be, what will we be discussing? First, how to choose a plugin, then how do you install a plugin? So later in today's talks, we're going to be covering Gutenberg as Christina mentioned, and then also a form plugin called Caldera Farms. So I'll walk you through installing that. And then plugins, best practices. And then finally, a few dream host suggested plugins. So choosing a plugin. First, you need to figure out the function. What are you, what are you trying to add to your website? What's the goals? Contact form, e-commerce, you're just doing a simple blog, basic things like that. There's single function plugins, multi function plugins, single function plugins, they're great. But then you start adding numerous plugins to the website, which could potentially impact performance, just more for you to worry about. So if you have the opportunity to choose a multi function plugin that still accomplishes what you want, it's better to go in that direction. As long as it's a quality plug. But be careful, you might put too many eggs in one basket. If that plugin stops being developed, for whatever reason, the plugins start having, having issues. So now you need to consider the source. One of the best places to get plugins is the WordPress repository, which, as was mentioned, has over 50,000 plugins right now. It's a lot of plugins to choose from. So how do you weed out the bad ones? Here's an example that I pulled from a plugin that hasn't been updated for a while. And if you were in the WordPress community for a while, you've been working with WordPress, you know P3 Profiler. There's a great diagnostic tool that was used to troubleshoot why a site might be having issues. And here, a few things to keep in mind is one, updates. When was the plugin last updated? You don't want something that was updated three years ago. You want something that's been updated in the last couple of months. This gives you an idea that the plugin isn't abandoned. Active installations. How many sites is the plugin running on? This is a great example because, one, the plugin is being widely used. So there's a better chance that the plugin is going to be around for longer, the more it's used. And it's been tested on multiple servers, multiple environments, so it has a better chance to work for your site. Another thing to be mindful of is when was the last version that was tested up until? Right now, we're on 4.9.8. This hasn't been tested since 4.1. So it's been a while. That plugin clearly looks abandoned. And if you're familiar with it, GoDaddy did say they were no longer supporting it. So what did the unanswered support request look like? Now that you know to be mindful of the last update, how many sites is it running on and what was the last version it was tested on? Does not scan other plugins? Is this plugin still secure? A bunch of different questions that aren't being answered. People stating it's not working. Further supporting that the plugin is abandoned. Reviews and ratings. What did the recent reviews look like? You could see that there was a bunch of 5 stars, but there's also a bunch of 1 stars back over here. Chances are all those 5 stars came when the plugin was still being actively supported. Time wasting plugin only scans itself, not working, only measuring itself. Further supporting the plugin is abandoned and you should move on. So it's very important to always choose a plugin that's being actively maintained. So it continues to work in the future with future WordPress updates and PHP and Apache updates as well. Another thing to be mindful of is does your host have a list of do's and don'ts? Dream host really doesn't have a list of do's and don'ts on our shared hosting. We have a list of don'ts and best practices on our managed hosting platform. And if you're ever curious, check with your host. They're usually more than happy to assist. Are you able to find guide settings, any kind of information to help you learn what the plugin does once you have it installed or how to make it do what you want? If you can't find any information, you might want to move on. Free and premium. Those are great. As Christina mentioned with the theme, you're supporting the developer. The developer is more likely to support that plugin moving forward because that's business, right? Okay. So now how do you install the plugin? Well, do we have any questions? So real quick, just so it's done for the future presentations, I'm going to walk you through installing Gutenberg and Caldora forums real quick. So if you'd like to follow along, we have our WordPress dashboard. And plugin installation is very easy. If you were similar to how Christina did it with the theme, you should really start with the WordPress plugin page directly. So if you wanted to search something, I noticed, you'd see right here, Caldora forums pops right up. Last updated three months ago. So it's been a few months since they had an update, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. What matters is was it tested up to the latest WordPress version, which it was. So you know it works with the latest WordPress version. It has over 100,000 active installs. So you know it's being widely used right now. And then down here, you can see the ratings. It has great ratings. 285 stars, few one stars, but that may just not, the plugin may not have worked for them, which this plugin may not work for you. You might find something better like contact form seven. So to install the plugin in your dashboard, you just go right here down to plugins, you click add new. And then here you'll have like featured popular recommended and then favorites. If you've connected it as Christina mentioned to your WordPress.org login, which of course you don't have to. And then scrolling down right here, you'll see Gutenberg. You just click that install now button. So the review isn't always the tall tell if the, if the plugin's a good one or not. Most of the time it is Gutenberg just people don't like change and Gutenberg is introducing change. Yeah. And Matt of course will go into Gutenberg, what it does, how it works a little bit more in the next talk. So once it's installed, you just click activate. And there it is. You can see it right here Gutenberg. The only option for this plugin here is to deactivate other ones may have other options. And then now we need to install the caldera form plugin. So then we go back here to plugins, add new. And then Caldera isn't actually listed on this page. So then you want to forms plugin. So we'll just type in forms out again. And here you'll see more of the popular form plugins listed because I did a broad search. Caldera forms would be right here. Just click install now. And that's a good, when you, when you know what functionality you're trying to add to your site, like a form, just type in forms and then take a look at what's available and see what works for you. So once it's installed again, just activate it. And then now it's activated. They've put up a few notice, they put up a notice on the top of my dashboard. Thanks for installing. I'm just going to close that. And then here they have an option where you can opt in to give them some, some data, anonymous data. You don't have to, of course, that is entirely up to you. But that just shows that there are potentially other options here that you can fiddle with. So yeah, installing a plugin, it's fairly easy. The best place is always the WordPress repository. You will find both free and premium, like free premium plugins. They have both free and pro versions there. So that's always your best stop because there are other options. But just because they're solely a premium plugin doesn't mean they're quality plugin. It still could act as a negative for your site, even though it's functionality that you may want and that you have to pay for it to get. So plugin best practices. Quality is important. Now there's a lot more to the quality of a plugin than the reviews, the ratings, when was it updated, support requests. But that's a little bit out of the scope of this talk. And as you become more familiar with WordPress, you'll learn that you'll need to keep an eye out for what, what it's actually doing in the backend. Every time you install a new plugin, you should always activate it, make sure its functionality is working, and then test your site. Make sure the front page isn't broken. Make sure it's still performing just as fast, if not almost as fast. Because a single plugin can slow your site down dramatically if it doesn't break it. Review your plugins regularly. If you're not reviewing your plugins and updating them regularly, it's potentially leaving an exploit. It can be exploited to compromise your site. It can slow down your site. It may break your site if you're not updating the plugin regularly, especially as WordPress releases updates, PHP comes out with new versions, things like that. Another thing to keep in mind is there's no magic number to the amount of plugins you can have installed and activated. Less is more though, but there is no magic number. A site can function with 100 plugins. A site can function with one plugin. The more you add, it's the more you have to worry about in terms of security and performance though. So try to keep it lean and mean. And then we have a few plugins that I typically recommend when a customer comes to me while I do my technical support at Dreamhost saying, well, how do I accomplish this? Well, here's a few. Anti-spam. So if you're allowing posts or comments on your posts or any kind of interaction from your customers or visitors, make sure you have an anti-spam plugin. Otherwise, you might wind up with get a free iPhone visiting this link. You don't want that. Backups are very important. And I'll touch on this later. You never want to solely rely on your host to have backups of your website. And something can happen at a moment's notice where your site has issues. I've seen it. Other people have seen it. Always generate your own personal backups that you have on your own computer or stored somewhere secure aside from the host. Captchas, contact forms. The duplicator plugin, it's a great plugin that allows you to easily migrate your site between web hosts, domain names, things like that. E-commerce, hands down WooCommerce, monitoring, Jetpack. Do you want to know if your site's always online? Do you want to know when your site goes down? Of course you do. Jetpack's great for that. Security. Security isn't, it's an added feature. All good hosts will run their own web application firewall, which is a server level security. It's just to add on to that if it's necessary. Most cases it's not. SEO. Make sure your site's found on Google. Troubleshooting. Let's say you're trying to figure out an issue with your website. Health check is a good plugin for that. I know I mentioned P3 profile earlier. Obviously that plugin was abandoned. Not a great plugin anymore. Health check is a good replacement. And then optimization. I know somebody over here asked about image sizing earlier. So a great plugin for that. And while Christina is right, you should try to do it beforehand and as you go if you're in a hurry, whatever reason, WP Smushit is a great image compression plugin. And then caching WP SuperCache. Helps your site perform as fast as possible. Any questions? Of course. If you just simply deactivate it, it will. But once you deactivate it, there will be an uninstall option. So you shouldn't have that issue. It should remove all of its traces. A bad plugin may not. Most of the time it does though. Which one? Oh, a WP Smushit. Yeah, the last one right there. The only time you really should leave a plugin in a deactivated state is if your troubleshooting plugin for example, you're not going to need to duplicate your plugin. You don't need that functionality daily. So the best bet on that is when you're done with a plugin, if you're no longer using it, uninstall it. Get rid of it. If you're not reusing it, you don't need the settings to remain. Get rid of it. It's one less thing you have to worry about. One of those things. Less is more. You want to worry less about things. Which one do we install? Do you remember? A lot of jetpack iterations, but I will say that YELP is a good one for Google Analytics. And then MoonCommerce has some really good add-ons for Google Analytics if you're using it for MoonCommerce. Yes, most of that is going to be added functionality via plugins. And this was just a basic list. There are social media plugins out there and if you check the reviews, make sure it's being a recently updated plugin, it should do what you need it to do. I don't have an example for that one at the moment. Any other questions? And then if you have any specific questions, of course, I'll be available throughout the day and I should be around tomorrow. Thank you.