Why You Should (Or Shouldn’t) Use Premium Plugins

WordSesh
  1. Blogging for Benjamin Competition
  2. Why I'm Grateful to Work on the Web
  3. 24 Pull Requests
  4. Update Downloadable Product's Expiration Date in WooCommere
  5. Get Lost in the Flow and Work for More Than a Salary
  6. Why A Plugin's Popularity Matters
  7. Why You Should (Or Shouldn't) Use Premium Plugins
  8. WooCommerce Terms & Conditions
  9. Only Ship to Continental United States with WooCommerce
  10. Just Talk
  11. Why I Love Jetpack
  12. Making Jetpack Better
  13. Remove Billing Address for Free Virtual Orders in WooCommerce
  14. Notify Admin of Customer Address Change in WooCommerce
  15. Open Your Self Up To New Possibilities
  16. 2013 Resolutions Review
  17. Create a Community
  18. Tips for Starting a Community
  19. The Intent of Goals
  20. Create The Ultimate Invoicing System Using WooCommerce
  21. Change From Address in Ninja Forms
  22. Work With People Who Inspire You
  23. Contact Form 7 & MailPoet Integration
  24. Monotasking
  25. Giving Back to The Community
  26. Adding Fuctionality to Lean Plugins
  27. Choose Stripe For a Payment Gateway
  28. A Dip Into Entrepreneurship
  29. Reward Yourself
  30. Blogging for Benjamin Plugin
  31. Blogging for Benjamin Wrap Up

I'm a big fan of premium plugins – they typically have more features, better support, and are better maintained than free plugins. Having said that you can actually do quite a bit with all of the free plugins available on the WordPress.org plugin repository. This site for example uses only free plugins and plugins I've written myself (okay technically I'm using one premium plugin because I'm experimenting with it).

Premium Plugins over Custom Programming

At this point I'm very happy using premium plugins when they meet a client's needs. This is a very different place than I was when I first started programming. Not just in technical means but in my philosophy towards development in general. My first job out of university was at a web development shop where I was a LAMP programmer. We built entirely custom content management systems with straight up PHP & MySQL.

I learned a great deal about programming and I was able to build some really advanced custom web apps like a time tracking app where employee's clock in, and a custom e-commerce site. The only downside to these web apps was the time investment. I spent two weeks building the e-commerce site from scratch where as using WooCommerce, a couple extensions, & a theme I could build that same site in a day.

I can't even imagine how many wasted hours I spent fiddling with forms in straight PHP & HTML rather than using a form builder like Gravity Forms or Ninja Forms.

WordSesh

I'm talking about this very topic today at WordSesh. I'm speaking at 17:00 UTC time (11am CST) about this very topic. Here are my slides:

I'll also be speaking about WooCommerce at 20:00 UTC time with some very talented folks: Brent Shepherd, Coen Jacobs, Daniel Espinoza, and the brilliant man who organized the whole WordSesh – Scotty B.

 

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