Using 3rd party plugins on a WordPress site

  • All,

    A novice question from a newish WordPress user. I am creating my website in WordPress and have found a plugin that will do most of what I want my site to do, albeit with a little bit of customisation.

    The question I have is the viability of using a Plugin from a 3rd party. Does that pose a risk to the site as I would be dependent on the plugin working all the time? What about scalability if the site takes off and we have more traffic than we anticipated? What is the company fades away, I assume the source code goes with it?

    Finally, would it make more sense for a commercial venture to create our own plugin?

    Thanks

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • Any plugin that you get from anywhere (this site included) can easily “dry up” and have future development fade away to nothing. When you purchase a commercial plugin, you run the same risk. In reality there’s really not much to worry about. Because of teh GPL license, every plugin has to follow that same license so the source code needs to be available. You’ll see the source code clearly when you download a plugin or theme from anywhere.

    As for creating your own plugin, sure, that’s a great idea. You don’t need to start a commercial venture to do that though. You can, but that woudl be up to you to decide on.

    Thread Starter amorv

    (@amorv)

    Thanks Cata. What about scalability? Could a plugin cause issues if the demand on the site is more than usual? Or would it be more about the platform the site is hosted on?

    It’s definitely more about the hosting platform.

    Saying “one plugin” is actually misleading. Think about it… Which plugin? Something like WooCommerce will take a whole lot more resources to run than a simple 3-4 line plugin for a very simple task. They are completely different things that have completely different resource needs. Number of plugins doesn’t correlate to much when it comes down to it.

    Moderator Jan Dembowski

    (@jdembowski)

    Forum Moderator and Brute Squad

    Moved to Fixing WordPress, this is not a Developing with WordPress topic.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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