What is the DIFFERENCE between a “Pluggin” and a “Widget”?

  • Hi,

    Please help me with the following questions as I try to learn wordpress:

    1. What is a pluggin? What does it really do?

    2. What is a widget? What does it really do?

    3. What is the difference between a “Pluggin” and a “Widget”?

    4. When I login to my WordPress admin panel, I see pluggins (which I uploaded) and I also see “Widgets” page.

    5. When I activate a “pluggin”, what else I need to do to make it appear or my website?

    6. When and how will I use a widget?

    I am little confused if I need to use just either widgets or pluggins or both? Also wondering how pluggins and widgets are connetced?

    Thank you.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • HI there.

    Well this is a interesting question. Widgets can come from plugins as well as just be embed into posts. A plugin can be anything from a spam blocker (which is invisible to your users), to a new sidebar widget which displays recent posts, something like that. The widgets pages are made for your sidebar, widgets are suppose to display there, and if you have a plugin that gives you a widget, it will display in the widget admin area. If you use a plugin that protects against spam for instance, you wouldn’t go to the widget area, but it wouldn’t appear on your site, you’d go to the options menu to play with settings. Widgets are purely front end stuff that appears for the most part in your sidebar. Plugins can do everything from protect a blog, to allowing people to see ad’s on your site. Widgets are something you want to use based on what your site is focusing on. If you run a travel site for instance you might want a widget that allows people to search flight times.

    Hope this helps!

    – A plugin is a collection of files that either change the way WordPress functions, or adds/removes functionality.

    Plugins are written (mostly) in the PHP-language and they are stored in wp-content/plugins directory. These plugins can be activated or deactivated through the WordPress admin panel by the blog admin.

    – Widgets are placeholders or user interface elements that present data or an user interface to the user.

    Sidebar widgets can be reordered, renamed, enabled or disabled to change the looks, feel and contents of the user interface. Some plugins present their own user interface as a sidebar widget. Sometimes plugins provide optional widgets (such as polls widget of wp-polls, or the language chooser widget of the Gengo plugin). Sometimes plugins have no widgets.

    Thread Starter rbhanot1

    (@rbhanot1)

    Thank you very much for your helpful answers.

    dakicka

    (@dakicka)

    Where should I download “widgets” to? Is it in the same areas as the plugins? Is it the same process to install them into wordpress as is the plugins?

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • The topic ‘What is the DIFFERENCE between a “Pluggin” and a “Widget”?’ is closed to new replies.