What do plugins do?? change the code of wordpress?

I sometimes see blog posts that give the code to make wordpress do a specific activity and then the post will also say "or you can just do it with this plugin".
Do adding simple plugins just modify the code of wordpress for me because I am too stupid or lazy to do it.
Do these plugins hurt my page load times or are do they have a relatively low impact on bandwidth usage and page delivery speeds?

Plugins just add functionality that isn't there in the default WP setup.
Depending on the plugin they can affect load time but it they are well written then it is negligible.

Using them does not mean you are stupid or lazy but you should only use them IF you need them.

I have seen people using plugins which were not purchased from reliable sites or were free and they crash the whole site. so its better to use less plugins as not to slow down the site or mess it up.

Plugins are nothing but some code to modify your Wordpress Installation. Once you activate a plugin, you kind of get a global file to execute your code that modifies / adds features to wordpress. These plugins reside in wp-content/plugins as you might already know. Do they hurt page loading time? Yes they do. Any plugin that you activate on your installation gets loaded in the run-time. That increases the loading time, or rather the "initial byte" of your page. Don't use plugin for everything. If you code your own plugins, then be sure to use lazyloading ( spl_autoload_register() ) so that all of your plugin code doesn't get loaded unnecessarily.

lucabrasi said:

I sometimes see blog posts that give the code to make wordpress do a specific activity and then the post will also say "or you can just do it with this plugin".
Do adding simple plugins just modify the code of wordpress for me because I am too stupid or lazy to do it.
Do these plugins hurt my page load times or are do they have a relatively low impact on bandwidth usage and page delivery speeds?

Click to expand...

Plugins are just pieces of script to enhance on WP, mostly.
You should use some protection like "better WP" and "wordfence" but other than that it is optional, as your site requires, imho. Just like W130SN said really, though he might not agree with the plugins I mentioned. lol

Good luck.

I find it's best to try avoid using plugins for simple stuff like social icons and photo galleries, etc. I know for a fact that my code is cleaner when I code it myself. All for a faster load time.

People need to realise the power of functions.php in Wordpress.

You can search the plugins on wordpress.org itself (http://wordpress.org/plugins), However you need to becareful sometimes all this plug in is not coded properly therefore you might have issue with your hosting company such as creating high loads due to the plugin is not properly configure or properly written. I would suggest spend a little money to hire someone to do it for you , it will be clean and good