WordPress is everywhere, and one of the coolest things about WordPress is the plethora of plugins available to customize your site. There’s two very obvious ways to find out about new plugins you may want to use on your site:

1. Search the WordPress.org plugins directory
2. Google “best (insert_plugin_functionality) plugin for wordpress”.

The problem with both these methods is that what you find is biased by people’s opinions, and glowing reviews may not always be unbiased ones. SOOOO… There’s a simple way to find out what people are really using on their site, a way of “finding useful wordpress plugins”. And they give you the answer right on any page of any site you go to. This method may not be as good as a direct mind-meld connection with the most in-demand web designer, but it’s probably as good as spending 20 seconds at their work computer after teleporting into their fancy live-work studio while they are sleeping. Here it is.

“View Source” is your friend

1. Go to any favorite site, hosted in WordPress (Google “Best WordPress sites” or “high traffic WordPress sites” if you need help identifying WordPress
2. View source (“View/Developer/View Source” on Chrome and “Develop/Show Page Source”)
3. Look for comments in the code (In Google Chrome on My MacBook Pro they were highlighted in green for me, making it easy to see)
   OR
   search for “plugin” in the source code

I was at some theme provider’s site, clicked on a showcase item, and it brought me to comedian Margaret Cho’s official site. Here’s what I found in the code on the homepage:

<!-- Start of Simply Instagram Custom CSS -->
<!-- Developed by Rolly G. Bueno Jr. -->

4. Search the WordPress plugin database for the plugin “Simply Instagram” That’s it. You now know one of the plugins that the web team or solo designer at MargaretCho.com uses on their site. No biased opinions, but the actual plugin in use. I thought it was worth sharing.
If you know a famous WordPress user you could check their site. Try Chris Lema’s site ( http://chrislema.com ) for example, and you will find:

When finding useful WordPress plugins, view source is your friend!