What is a WordPress plugin? A Catalysts Or A Piece Of Software?
I know the above title on what is a WordPress plugin might seem a little bit weird but let me say it’s derived from a personal experience I had a couple of weeks ago and which I’ll be sharing with you in the paragraphs to come.
What Is A WordPress Plugin? A Catalysts Or A Piece Of Software?-How It All Began
In around mid-January this year, I had the opportunity to meet up with a potential client whose main business is in the stationary department and the main aim of the meeting was to see how his business could generate more sales online. The whole story of how he didn’t generate any sales with his business website is long so I’ll skip to the juicy part of the story which is what motivated me to come up with the above title.
When my potential client had summoned his IT specialist and the three of us were now busy looking for a way to help him start generating sales online, I proposed that he opens a WordPress blog now that his business website was operating on another platform (I love WordPress because of its flexibility and ease of use) and as the conversation went on and on, I mentioned that WordPress plugins can help to make work a lot easier and this was the point where my client dropped the bombshell “What Is A WordPress Plugin?”
I responded a little bit off guard by saying that a WordPress plugin is a piece of software that helps to make your work easier by adding certain functionalities to your blog and this was the point where his trusted IT specialist “bitterly corrected” me by claiming a plugin is a catalyst and that I should NEVER say it’s a software, NEVER!
The IT specialist went on and on bubbling about how I should never say a WordPress plugin is a piece of software but instead say it’s a catalyst and although I was a bit tempted to Google “What is a WordPress plugin” and show him the true definition of what a WordPress plugin is, I opted not to disrupt his joyous five minutes of blowing his trumpet by “showing off his expertise” and so here we are.
So What Is A WordPress Plugin? Is It A Catalysts Or A Piece Of Software?
To be fair in coming up with the correct definition of what is a WordPress plugin, I used the same source (Wikipedia) to define what a catalyst is and what a plugin is.
- A Catalyst– A catalyst is a substance which alters the rate of a chemical reaction and which is not consumed by the reaction itself.
- A Plugin– In computing, a plug-in (or plugin) is a set of software components that adds specific abilities to a larger software application.
From the above definitions, I think it’s only fair to say that a Plugin is a software component that adds specific capabilities to a larger software application. This therefore means that a WordPress plugin is a software component that adds specific capabilities to a WordPress blog e.g. The All In One SEO Pack is a WordPress plugin that allows one to easily optimize their WordPress blog for search engines.
NB: WordPress plugins are not programs themselves, they only act as add-ons or an extension pack so to say.
All in all, I really enjoyed the meeting and the short moments of both surprise and shock which I doubt will ever escape from my memory. As for this post, we have the IT guy to thank for two main things:
- The motivation to write this post- I had been planning to write about the definition of a WordPress plugin for quite some time but always kept on procrastinating.
- The awesome title-What is a WordPress plugin? A Catalysts Or A Piece Of Software?
Feel free to share your thoughts on what is a WordPress plugin, we’d be glad to hear from you!