1) Only use plugins by trusted developers. (you can tell this by the plugin ratings + how many downloads, usually)
2) most certainly, BE CAREFUL
3) downloads, ratings, and what people are saying in the forums
4) just be careful. look at a developers site, does it look spammy? do they have other plugins? are they a contributor to the WordPress core? Mark Jaquith, for example, is a superb developer and core developer, he’s a trusted developer in my books.
All of @jonathan Dingman’s advice is spot on.
One thing to consider is that regardless of testing standards, etc. Sometimes a plugin will crash your site.
The reason being is that with so many themes, plugins, and hosting environemnts around – there is no possible way to test every possible combination of the three.
Good coding from reputable developers will definitely keep this to a minimum, but every now and then, something may still crash. A plugin may conflict with another plugin, or a theme. Or, especially with shared hosting, your host just might do something goofy which makes a plugin cry.
And if you find a plugin that is doing evil things and it’s from the repository here, please email plugins AT wordpress.org so it can be reviewed 🙂
I think there should be other ways of evaluating plugins. Merely going by the number of stars doesn’t seem sufficient.
If a plugin’s use is not for average users, this should be mentioned clearly and a “warning” must be specified. “Risks” if any, must be specified.
The two crashes mentioned in my first post occurred when I was dealing with cache related plugins. In the 2nd case all I did, I tried to uninstall it, the way it mentioned within the plugin.
Now as another poster said earlier, since we use a lot of plugins, incompatibilities can be cause.
Unfortunately, unless I take a course or two, I wouldn’t learn everything that I need to know. So, I will have a slow site for a while. http://www.bemache.com
Define “risk.”
It’s not as easy as you’d think. With all plugins, themes and whatnot, there’s a risk that something unforseen will happen. What you’re really asking is “how likely is it that this will happen?” And that depends on a lot of variables.
Average may not be the right term! To me average user is one who doesn’t know exactly all the terms mean. In the cache plugin example, there are a lot of variables to consider and there are a lot of choices to make. An average user of WordPress, doesn’t know the meaning of all of the terms. All he/she may know is that the plugin potentially enhances the site load.
I consider myself an average user.
By “risk” I just had my own predicament in mind, namely, my site crashing.
I have to mention one thing, so there wouldn’t be a confusion. I am very thankful that such a platform as WordPress exists. I tried another CMS, Joomla; I couldn’t figure it out as easily. The fact that I have a site is a miracle! Thanks to WordPress! 🙂
to me average user is one who doesn’t know exactly all the terms mean.
What terms? And at what point does the user progress from being average? “Average user” is a highly subjective term that can never be precisely defined to the satisfaction of everyone.
I consider myself an average user.
Exactly. For every user, the definition will be different. So it’s simply not possible to come up with a system that would be suitable for such a variable audience – beyond what has already been tried on wordpress.org with “rating” and “does/doesn’t work” functionality (both of which are likely to be heavily skewed towards negative experiences).
The very best thing you can do is learn how to recover from the problems caused by a bad plugin – namely resetting the plugins folder by FTP or phpMyAdmin. That way, you can be up & running again within minutes 99.9% of the time.
esmi: thanks for being ever so available and helpful. I have something to work on. I will look into learning about resetting the plugins folder just in case I have a problem.
No problem. And remember that, if you get really stuck, there should always be someone around here that can point you in the right direction. 🙂
I will esmi! and I can’t thank YOU enough. A great part of this for me has been, believe it or not, getting applause from friends and family for having this “great” site. LOL
