Chapter 16

Enhancing Your Web Site with Plugins

In This Chapter

Installing plugins on your WordPress Web site

Exploring e-commerce options for WordPress

Creating photo galleries and portfolios

Providing Web forms on your Web site

Building networking and social communities

Including popular social networks

In the chapters leading up to this, I demonstrate the features and functions that are built in to the WordPress platform that you can use to create WordPress themes and provide a nice visual layout and look for your WordPress Web site. However, several add-ons, or plugins, for WordPress provide solutions for specific needs, such as e-commerce (selling products), photo galleries and portfolios, Web forms, social networking, and more.

Plugins exist for WordPress to provide solutions for needs that the majority of WordPress users don’t have, so the good people at WordPress create them as optional, add-on plugins rather than making them part of the core WordPress package. That way WordPress doesn’t become this huge, unmanageable thing.

Several WordPress plugins are available to you for free from the WordPress Plugin Directory page at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins, or you can search for and install plugins within your Dashboard. Other, more complex, plugins are available for a nominal cost from the developer; you pay a set price to download and use the plugin as well as obtain support from the plugin author. In this chapter, I provide you with a mixture of free and commercial (paid) plugins that provide you with the solutions you need for different offerings on your Web site projects.