WordPress is the most widely used web development platform globally that offers over 55000 plugins. This is also one of the major reasons why many choose to develop their business websites using WordPress. But the abundance of WordPress plugins also confuses business administrators when having to choose the right plugin for their website. As plugins are directly related to a website’s functionality, it is worth pondering over the need to opt for custom plugin development. This post offers some top reasons why installing custom WordPress plugins can add to the level of customization offered by your website, adding to the user experience offered by it.
Why Choose Custom WordPress Plugin Development?
WordPress offers ample plugins at zero cost, but every business has unique requirements, and your website’s functionalities must adhere to them. With custom WordPress plugin development, you can have functionalities tailored to your business-specific requirements. If you have an in-house IT team, you can ask them to develop this for you or you can approach a professional WordPress development company to get it done at affordable rates.
The best part of developing a custom WordPress plugin is that you can extend your website’s functionalities in different critical areas like website maintenance, marketing & sales, content plugins, API plugins, and many more. This also gives you an extra edge over your competitors as you can get custom functionalities for your WordPress site that sets it apart from others.
Factors That Affect Plugin Development Cost
Most businesses think that custom WordPress plugin development is a much more costly affair than using plugins from the WordPress plugin directory. It may be true up to some extent but only until you start leveraging the benefits of it. Once you have installed a custom WordPress plugin on your website, you will find it much more profitable in the long run.
Here are some critical factors that can affect the total cost of developing a custom WordPress plugin:
Complexity Involved: The prime factor that decides the cost of custom plugin development is the level of complexity in integrating that plugin and the type of functionality that your solution will get via that plugin.
Time: If your development need is urgent, your custom plugin developer might quote you a higher price to deliver the plugin within the given tight deadline.
Maintenance & Support: Although this does not indicate direct development cost, to ensure the uninterrupted performance of the plugin, you will need to opt for maintenance and support solutions.
Advantages of Custom WordPress Plugin Development
There are multiple benefits of installing custom WordPress plugins on your business website. Here are some featured benefits that will add to your brand’s popularity and profitability.
Optimizes Site Performance
With a custom plugin, your site’s performance can easily improve. This is because of the added customized functionalities catering to your target audience. This also helps you to speed up your website and enhance the overall user experience.
Keeps Your Website Security Intact
In this growing world of cybercrimes, businesses must secure the personal information of users along with other critical data. When you download plugins from the WordPress directory, your site remains open to various security vulnerabilities. However, with custom plugins, developers use HTML codes to build your plugin eliminating all possible security issues.
Availability of Active Support
When you hire a WordPress developer to create a plugin for your business website, all maintenance and support-related tasks are taken care of by the developer. Hence, you need not worry about timely upgrades to the plugin or any performance-related issues. Moreover, professional and expert developers use clean codes to develop plugins that make maintenance much simpler and easy.
Addition of Loyal Customers to Your User Base
When you extend your WordPress site’s functionalities with custom plugins, your customers or visitors find navigation much easier. They can easily go through sections and reach the page they are looking for. Installing a custom WordPress plugin with added functionalities is a sure-shot way to enhance user experience. This eventually results in adding loyal customers to your user base.
To make sure that you get all the above advantages through a custom WordPress plugin, you must also plan well before approaching a plugin developer.
Having a Clear Idea
When choosing between developing one or downloading free plugins, you must use your analytical skills. Come up with a robust plan on what features and functionalities you want to add to your site. Do you need an entirely new set of functionalities? Or, do you just want to offer a complement to what already exists on your website? A well-planned approach toward plugin development will yield desired results. Discuss it with your internal team and come up with some fresh ideas to boost the functionality of your site.
Read Also: Admin Dashboard is Not Displaying Properly- Why & How to Fix It
Frameworks & Resources to Consider for WordPress Plugin Development
Before you approach a professional WordPress developer, you must know about some latest and most popular plugin development frameworks.
Herbert: This framework is based on Laravel’s Eloquent ORM that facilitates developers to handle database queries effectively.
WordPress Plugin Boilerplate: This is another fantastic object-oriented framework to build high-quality WordPress plugins. It has comprehensive documentation of all classes, functions, and variables to support rapid plugin development.
WordPress Sanity Plugin Framework: As the name suggests, this framework aims at adding clarity and civility to your plugin development. Developers can use its logical template system to deliver exactly what you require.
WordPress Settings API PHP Class: This advanced plugin development framework allows developers to create a plugin setting page with all required fields by adding arrays.
Endnote
Developing a custom WordPress plugin certainly boosts the performance of a WordPress site, alongside offering several other advantages. This post has discussed all the critical aspects related to plugin development. Hopefully, it will provide you with valuable guidance concerning how to proceed.
