If you’d like to find out if WordPress Plugins are safe and secure to use?
This article will go beyond giving you an answer but also teach you how to check if a WordPress Plugin is safe to use on your website.
There’s no harm in using WordPress Plugins on your Website as any plugin on the WordPress Repository and Themeforest are generally safe though there’s a chance that they can’t all be compatible with your WordPress Theme.
The best way to check if a WordPress Plugin is safe to use is to do the following:
- Check the Number of Downloads.
- Read The Reviews.
- Check the Last Update Date.
- Check your Theme’s Documentation.
Check The Number of Downloads
This may not be accurate most of the time but plugins that are safe to use are mostly downloaded or purchased a good number of times.
If the plugin you want to use on your site is on Themeforest, you can see the number of Sales, if it’s above 5000, then the plugin is secure.
For The WordPress Repository, you can view a bar chart of the number of daily downloads on the Plugins Page, if the plugin is downloaded every day at least 1000 times a month, then it’s safe.
Read The Reviews
This is the best way to determine whether a WordPress Plugin is safe and secure. You visit the Plugin’s page and then read the reviews present.
What I like to do is read the bad reviews and if these are stuff that could happen to my website, then I’ll tick the plugin as not safe.
On Themeforest, once you’re on the Plugin’s sales page, you can on the Reviews and Comments Tab, and you can see how the plugin is treating the websites of several WordPress users who have purchased it.
If your plugin is on the WordPress Repository, you can switch to the Reviews Tab and then click on the 1 – 3 stars review and start reading the comments of WordPress users who weren’t satisfied with the plugin and why they say it isn’t safe.
Check When the Plugin was Last Updated
Plugins that are no longer updated by the developers are generally unsafe and there are tons of them on the WordPress Repository.
Luckily, you can simply click through to the Plugin’s page and you can see when the plugin was last updated, if it’s been over a year or 2, chances are that this plugin may contain viruses or malware which can destroy your site.
On Themeforest, you can check the Plugin’s Changelog which is usually on the Sales page.
Check your Theme’s Documentation
Yes, One theme’s unsafe plugin is another theme’s safe plugin… literally, I had a WordPress Theme that automatically lazy loaded my images and optimized my CSS and JS files.
For that theme, any Lazy Loading or CSS/JS optimization plugins are deemed unsafe and can cause a lot of problems on your site.
Every WordPress Theme’s Documentation always gives you a list of compatible plugins, it’s important you go through them before making any decisions that may impact your site.
Final Thoughts
If you’ve managed to install an unsafe plugin on your WordPress Website, it can be reversed 99% of the time by uninstalling the plugin and clearing your Site’s Cache.
However, if the plugin still causes issues even after being uninstalled, you need to revert your site to the way it was before you installed the plugin in other words restore a backup.
Most WordPress Hosts like Hostinger and Bluehost are great and they offer automatic daily backups.
If you have any questions on this topic, feel free to ask me in the comments section.
