The default way to add functionality to WordPress is to buy it. There is a plugin for almost everything, most of them are cheap, and installing one takes a minute. For a great many jobs that is genuinely the right call and I will tell you so.
Where it stops being the right call
It stops when you need three or four of them to cover one job. Now you have several settings screens, several update cycles, and several authors who each assumed they were the only plugin touching that part of the site. When something breaks, nobody owns it, and the fix is usually to buy a fifth plugin.
- Licences that renew annually, for as long as the site exists
- Features you will never use, loading on every request
- An abandonment risk you cannot see until it has happened
What written means in practice
It means one plugin, scoped to the actual job, with an admin screen built for whoever has to use it rather than for every possible customer. It is yours outright, nothing renews, and when it needs to change it changes. That is usually three days to two weeks of work rather than months.
A plugin nobody has updated in three years is not free. It is a bill you have not received yet.
Written by Denney, a freelance developer based between Richmond and Kingston. If any of this applies to something you are planning, available for new projects.
