One of the most powerful aspects of the WordPress platform is the concept of plugins.
In a nutshell, WordPress was designed to allow third party developers to “plugin” programs that extend the platform. I’ve often explained the concept of plugins to WordPress newcomers by saying “anything that you want on your website or blog to do that you’d normally have to pay a developer to write generally already exists in the form of a plugin.”
One of the most amazing things about WordPress plugins is that the majority of plugins are free. Still, you can make donations to a plugin’s developer and I highly encourage it.
In this post I will walk you through the decision process of making a donation to the developer of a free plugin. I’ll also share with you who we made donations to this year and why.
One of the first and most important things to think about when considering using a plugin on your blog is the plugin’s true value.
There are hundreds of novel and cute WordPress plugins available at WordPress.Org. Beyond the “wow factor”, however, many of these plugins really won’t help make your blog a better blog, and installing too many plugins can become a problem. Every plugin you install on your blog complicates it and uses resources. Poorly written plugins can consume a high amount of server resources, cause your blog to crash, or even open the door to security vulnerabilities.
So how do you determine whether a plugin is of value to your blog?
Criteria For Evaluating A Plugin
I look at WordPress plugins from three different perspectives.
The first question I ask is “what does the plugin do to help me be a more efficient blogger?” There are a good number of plugins that can help save you time. One that comes to mind is Automatic SEO Links. This plugin automatically creates internal site links from defined keywords to create a “page sculpting” effect that is similar to Wikipedia’s internal linking structure.
The second perspective I evaluate is what a plugin can do to facilitate a reader’s experience. A good example of one of these plugins is TweetMeMe. As a reader, adding something to Twitter can be a pain. You have to copy the link, shorten the link, and then write something in Twitter. TweetMeMe turns this into a single click allowing me to share great content with my followers in 1/10th of the time.
Last, I evaluate a plugin’s ability to fill gaps in the WordPress platform. I’ll talk more about this later in the post.
Determining Whether You Should Donate
Once you have determined the appropriate plugins for your blog, I encourage you to make a donation to a subset of these plugins’ creators. Plugins are time consuming to create and maintain. A monetary donation helps the plugin’s creator justify expanding the functionality of the plugin and ensuring its compatibility with future versions of WordPress.
When I evaluate making a donation to a plugin’s developer, I do so based on the value that the plugin provides to my blog. This goes beyond determining whether it saves me time or provides a user a better experience. I literally look at it from a “return on investment” perspective.
Let me introduce the three plugins we donated to at Orangecast this year and then I’ll come back to this topic of ROI.
2009 Plugin Donations by Orangecast
#1 – Platinum SEO Pack
Platinum SEO Pack is a plugin that fills a massive gap in the base WordPress platform. By default installation, WordPress does not allow for the manipulation of title and description meta-tags. Platinum SEO Pack allows a blogger to have control over the meta tags in their blog. This includes pages, posts, and the home page. Without this plugin, we could not compete in search engines. We use Platinum SEO Pack on every blog we own and recommend it for every client we work with.
#2 – Google XML Sitemaps
Google XML Sitemaps is a plugin that creates and maintains an XML file that is used by Google’s crawler. This file can be discovered by Google or submitted through Google’s webmaster tools. Creating and maintaining an XML sitemap, even with a third party application, is a major pain. Having this functionality automatically happen every time you hit post is essential.
#3 – WP Database Backup
Writing a blog takes time. All of the content posted to a blog is stored in a MySQL Database provided by the hosting company. In addition to all of your content, this database stores all of the configurations of your blog and its plugins. In the event of a problem with your blog, a backup of this database becomes crucial. With a backup, your blog can be restored in minutes. Without it, you could loose your blog.
WP Database Backup brings backups to your administrator console and allows you to automate the process. Installing WP Database Backup on your blog IS NOT optional; it’s necessary.
Continuing The ROI Discussion
At Orangecast, time is our most precious resource. We looked at a variety of plugins when we made our donation decisions for 2009. There are a lot of plugins we appreciate. Still, our decision to donate to these three WordPress plugins was based on time recovery and peace of mind (backups). We literally viewed these three plugins as WordPress plugins that we could not do without.
Every blogger has different needs. The three plugins we chose to donate to might not even be installed on your blog. Therefore, you have to make these decisions on your own. As you go through the process, be honest with yourself in terms of the value you get from a plugin and the overall return it provides you.
After you’ve done this, pay it forward accordingly.
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