Craft CMS Plugins

Plugins

What are plugins?

Plugins extend Craft with extra functionality — search, redirects, SEO, calendars, and more. They’re installed and configured by development.

Why is a paid plugin being used?

Some plugins provide functionality the site requires per its specifications, and some save significant development time or do things beyond what’s practical to build from scratch. Paid plugins are chosen when they’re the most cost-effective way to meet a requirement.

Why is a free plugin being used?

Many high-quality plugins are maintained by the Craft community at no cost. Whether a plugin is free is up to its author.

What is a recurring (yearly) plugin cost?

Some commercial plugins include an optional yearly renewal that funds ongoing development and updates. Renewing keeps the plugin eligible for the latest updates; letting it lapse usually means the installed version keeps working but stops receiving updates.

Do I need to configure plugins myself?

Generally no. Plugins are set up by development. A few have editor-facing screens (for example redirects and search), which are covered on their own Help pages.

Plugins used on this site

The exact set evolves over time; current highlights include:

• Retour (nystudio107) — manage 301 redirects. See the “Site Redirects” page.
• SEOmatic (nystudio107) — site-wide and per-page SEO and social metadata. See the “Site Specific” page.
• SiteSearch — the site’s faceted search (a custom module that replaced the former third-party search plugin). See the “SiteSearch” page.
• Plus supporting plugins for assets, image resizing, maps, forms/feeds, and content tooling.

Note: During the upgrade to Craft 5, two plugins that earlier versions of this manual referenced — Blockonomicon and Reliquary — were removed. Their roles are now handled natively: page modules are built with Craft’s nested entries (see the “Rebar Module System” page), and search is handled by the SiteSearch module (see the “SiteSearch” page).