Wordpress is a very useful program and there are lots of really useful plug-ins for it
, but there are some that can damage your website, your reputation and your wealth.
Your first installation of any plug-in should be to a site that is not public, one that you are building, for example. Some plug-pins cause your site to slow right down because they are communicating with other sites. This effect will be much more noticeable on a dial-up or satellite broadband connection and may make your site unusable.
There are Chat Support plug-ins that require you to download software onto your computer. This software is not always reliable and may cause problems that even a System Restore will not fix. It is best to avoid this kind of plug-in unless you have access to an old PC that you can afford to trash by installing poorly constructed programs.
You should be especially careful of some of the Search Engine Optimization Plug-Ins. Some of these will put links on your web pages, and put your links on the pages of similar sites in exchange, building your search engine ratings. The problem is that they do not appear to monitor the text of these links or the sites that they come from.
It is not possible to filter out all undesirable link text and sites using automatic filters. After the automatic filtering is done, each and every link and website needs to be screened by a real live person.
One local community website reported having links to hacking sites and link text that included strong language. These links damaged the reputation of the website and cost the owner money.
By testing out the plug-ins on a non-public site you can see what effect they have and avoid losing control of your site's content.