The popularity of WordPress is in no small part thanks to its customizability. There are tens of thousands of third-party themes and plugins that make the ubiquitous blogging platform vastly more useful. Unfortunately, those who have chosen to host their site on WordPress.com are prevented from using them.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s about to change, as Automattic today announced that those with business-tier accounts on WordPress.com can now install third-party themes and plugins built by other WordPress users.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s huge, as there are some really useful WordPress tools that exist outside of the Automattic ecosystem, like Yoast, Membership, and others.<\/p>\n
Similarly, it\u2019ll mean that WordPress Business users will be able to more easily customize their site, upload bespoke themes, or install ones they\u2019ve bought from marketplaces like ThemeForest.<\/p>\n
While inconvenient, I actually understand why WordPress.com has held such a strong line against third-party plugins and themes, as they\u2019re often exploited as an avenue of ingress by hackers. It doesn\u2019t matter how secure your box is, or how current your install is; one poorly-built plugin can ruin everything.<\/p>\n
I assume that Automattic has figured a way to sandbox WordPress sites from each other, and that\u2019s why they\u2019re slowly rolling out this feature.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the company hasn\u2019t made it available to all users. It\u2019s currently only available to those on the most expensive Business plan, which runs at nearly $21 per month. That\u2019ll be a bitter pill for some to swallow. DreamHost, on the other hand, charges $7.95 per month for shared WordPress hosting, and doesn\u2019t have the same limitations of WordPress.com\u2019s cheaper plans.<\/p>\n