What are WordPress Plugins? | EP 830

What are WordPress Plugins?

Read the full episode transcript below:

00:28 David Blackmon: Welcome to another episode of WP The Podcast, my name is David Blackmon.

00:35 Tim Strifler: And i’m Tim Strifler

00:38 David Blackmon: And this is day three of Airpod podcasting, sorry about that if the audio is a little jacked. Hopefully it’s not too terrible. Today we’re going to talk about what WordPress plugins are, and before i let our resident definer define what a WordPress plugin is, because Tim’s going to do a hell a lot better job than I am. I’m going to tell you my definition of the WordPress plugin. A WordPress plugin for guys like me who are not developers, are magical little things that allow me to create amazing incredible stuff in WordPress. Now Tim tell them really what a WordPress plugin is?

01:23 Tim Strifler: I’m going to give two definitions. One is the super simple short definition uh which is…

01:29 Siri: …not sure I understand…

01:31 Tim Strifler: Excuse me Siri, sorry folks…

01:42  David Blackmon: Yeah, we had a Siri moment.

01:43 Tim Strifler: So here’s i’m gonna give two definitions. The first one is my super short simple definition which is, plugins are like apps for your website, right? If you think about your you have your Iphone or maybe you have a an Android phone the phone can do some things on its own but then you install uh apps to your phone to extend the functionality, and to be able to do so many more things that otherwise wouldn’t be possible with just the phone software. Right, so that’s the same thing with your WordPress site. WordPress can do some things, basic things. Your theme, then adds some abilities as well but if you want to take things even further you need to install plugins. And so um yesterday we talked about like the layers of a WordPress site. You know this is like super kind of high level, you have you you know WordPress itself, which is like the content layer the content management layer. And then you have themes which are your theme is like the design layer, and then plugins or we talked about child themes which is like the customization layer to customize the themes. Code and then plugins is like the functionality layer. Right, now it’s it gets kind of wonky and a little bit confusing because these days themes are so much more than what they used to be. If you think of things like themes like Divi. Well Divi is a full-fledged page builder and it allows you to add things like contact forms and it allows you to add things like sliders and all these different things that normally a theme wouldn’t allow you to do. So it’s a little bit wonky the separation between theme and plugins is blurred compared to way back in the day where the theme was like just like a skin and then you would add plugins to to do things. But yeah, if so now you can kind of look at it as okay well now your theme is really powerful and can do a lot of things. But plug-ins allows you to do more right especially when you have plug-ins like what David has on his website, when i have on my website Divi life and WP Zone. WP Zone’s David’s site DiviLife.com is my site where we have plugins specifically for Divi, that take Divi even further than it could do with just the theme itself. So that’s my multi-answer. You know, depending on what you want so either the short simple layman’s term answer which is plugins or apps for your website or the more a little more complicated answer which is uh plugins are the functionality layer of your website to extend what your website can do to extend what your theme can do. So well..

04:26  David Blackmon: I like my i like my definition better.

04:30 Tim Strifler: Your definition was good too.

04:34  David Blackmon: Magical pieces of little amazingness that helps you do cool stuff

04:37 Tim Strifler:  Yeah i’m sure they’re gonna put that in the wordpress code as the official

04:40  David Blackmon: They probably should, they probably should. All right, tomorrow we’ve got another great topic how often should i change a theme or should you do it at all until tomorrow we’ll see you then.

04:47 Tim Strifler: Take care, bye.