Plugins

~ Veselin

In case you’re still using the Free plan and have always missed the ability to install custom plugins, there hasn’t be a better moment to upgrade to Personal or Premium. WordPress.com is running a promotion that allows plugins and theme installs on both Personal and Premium, available for for new plan upgrades.

Getting a longer-term plan would show you the promotion even if you’re already on Personal.

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Published by Veselin

I ❤️ WordPress

17 thoughts on “Plugins”

  1. Do you have any plugins you’d recommend?

    And how does this work anyway? WP staff is always bitching on the forums at users about how you can ONLY have plugins on the business plan because business plans run on “different servers so they are more secure”. So is for all plugins, or just a subset? And has staff been lying all these years?

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    1. This is the promotion – to be able to get plugins with lower-tier plans. There are lots of limitations (no dev tooling like ssh, sftp, almost none of the Jetpack paid features) but you can still add any plugin you like.

      I only have this blog, and it doesn’t use any plugins. Maybe I should get some, although not sure which. It’s quite simple and I’d like to keep it that way for the time being. That’s why I won’t make any recommendations 🙂

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      1. I tried to find out more info on this (how long can I use plugins, etc) but am coming up blank. You got any additional links?
        My biggest concern is getting a mass url changer and something to export to blogspot.
        I’m also concerned about upgrading, using plugins and then having the hassle of downgrading. People on the business plans always seem to have to come to the forums to get help to downgrade…

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      2. Yep, going for a plan means changing urls. You’ll have to get a domain (free for the first year with annual plans). https://bookstooge.wordpress.com/ will become something like bookstooge.com or .blog or whatever. And if you stop paying at some point, you’ll get reverted to the old url.

        As for the duration, the WordPress.com plans are sold for terms from 1 month to 3 years, and your plan won’t change when it renews. You won’t lose your plugins when the promotion expires.

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      5. 1) If someone upgrades, how is that possible on lower tier plans? I haunt the forums and have been ASSURED that is is IMPOSSIBLE to have plugins on lower tier plans. IMPOSSIBLE. So someone is lying. Either the people running this promotion OR the staff on the help forums. Either way, it is not reassuring at all.

        2) If someone chooses to downgrade back to the free plan, do they have go through the same process that business plan users do? Ie, once they click on “downgrade” they still have to go to the public help forum and have the staff actually do the downgrade and re-affirm they (the business plan user) want to do this? What if someone is banned from the forums? How do they deal with that?

        3) When a business plan user downgrades, their site goes back to the last moment before the upgrade, ie, they lose everything on their site that they did after the upgrade. That’s totally shit, but honestly, once someone upgrades, usually for monetary reasons, I can see why they’d never go back. Does a free user who upgrades have to worry about that too? say I upgrade, use the mass url changer to change every *.bookstooge.wordpress.com link to *bookstooge.com. If I go back the free plan, will all of those links go back to the point before I used the mass url changer? What all of my posts I write AFTER the upgrade? Will I lose those too?

        4) Even if you answer these questions, WP has zero accountability. I cannot find ANYTHING documenting anything. That’s like me going to a car dealer and just taking their word that they will give me credit and make payment on the car. And it leaves me totally unprotected too.

        5) Promotions need to list out, explicitly, what can and cannot be done, time frames, renewal rates and what happens when you decide to upgrade or downgrade from the current plan.

        Thanks for taking the time to listen, but after the experiences I’ve had with wp.com, I wouldn’t touch something like this with a 10ft pole because of wp’s bad faith actions in the past. This isn’t personal about you, it’s about WP. They already lie about the level of support business plan owners get, This I know from following several business plan users who have chronicled their experiences, with screen shots of what has gone between them and “support”. I’ve experienced the gaslighting, lies and user blaming on the personal plan myself too. So call me cynical.

        Sorry to have talked your ear off.

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      6. > If someone upgrades, how is that possible on lower tier plans? I haunt the forums and have been ASSURED that is is IMPOSSIBLE to have plugins on lower tier plans. IMPOSSIBLE. So someone is lying. Either the people running this promotion OR the staff on the help forums. Either way, it is not reassuring at all.

        It was not possible before yesterday, now there’s a promotion that makes it possible for as a summer special promotion. However, if you’re already on a Personal plan, it’s a plan with no plugins support, so you’ll need to buy a new one, for example, Premium, or a longer-term Personal.

        > If someone chooses to downgrade back to the free plan

        Look, my team did this incredibly cool promotion and wanted to share it because I’m proud with our work on it. Sometimes, the Free plan is just the best fit. I used it for more than a decade on WordPress.com with no issues.

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      8. Matt’s announcement explains the difference between sites with and without plugins very well:

        https://ma.tt/2025/08/simplification/

        And I feel ready to answer all of your questions. You can’t lose data with WordPress if you have backups, and WordPress as a software lets you export everything and keep it on your computer, then import it on any other host. Even if you install some evil plugin that ruins your permalink structure, another evil editor that ruins your post contents, you can still be safe. However, you can do both – you can both ruin your permalinks and post contents.

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  3. I recall dreaming about this feature just last year. I’m not going for this, but hopefully it will become part of the personal/premium plan someday. I don’t like the fact that it comes with a promotion and deprive the existing user 😦

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    1. It doesn’t deprive anyone, if you’re on a Personal plan and want it, you can get a longer-term Personal and will receive the promotion. Let’s say you’re on month 3 of an annual Personal. You can get the 2-year Personal with the promotion. The 9 months left from the last annual plan will be prorated, so you’ll pay the cost of 2-year Personal minus the 9 month proration minus the term discount (because it’s 2 years, which is 2x the default of 1 year).

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