Tag: What Are Plugins

One of the main advantages of building an online presence with the WordPress web content publishing software is the ability to quickly increase your WordPress site’s functionality using plugins.

About WordPress Plugins

No doubt, you probably use a mobile phone. What do you do when you would like to access something new on your device like a new software or a new business tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little software that is very easy to install and adds new features to any mobile phone.

(Just as you can find social sharing apps …)

A WordPress plugin is like an app. You simply install a software that provides new functionality to your website or blog …

(… you can also find social sharing plugins for WordPress sites!)

Generally, adding a new feature to an already-built website involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the new feature or enhancements, things can get quite expensive, particularly if it involves programming code.

This is also applicable to starting a web site. Businesses tend to spend money for additional features or options they probably will never need.

To save money and keep expenses low, we suggest using a modular approach when developing your website and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get your web site up and running quickly, then …

2) As you need more features, just install new applications with just a few clicks of the mouse that integrate seamlessly with your site, giving your web site an entirely new and expanded range of possibilities, and also …

3) Cost not one dollar more to install on your web site?

Well, that’s exactly what WordPress plugins let you do!

Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

I started this blog post by comparing plugins with smartphone apps. In the same way that some apps are free to download and some cost a little money, so do WP plugins.

In fact, thousands of plugins can be installed and activated on your websites.

WordPress plugins that you have to buy are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of investing in professional web development services to add the same functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. ”paid”) plugins cost very little.

Also, as WordPress makes its code available to everyone, anybody can create, edit and customize any part of the WordPress code. This has allowed thousands of third-party web development companies to enhance the WPsoftware.

• WP plugins let you start simply with a simple web site and add new features and enhancements to your site if required.
• WP plugins allow you to add almost endless features to your website easily and cheaply.
• WordPress plugins give your web site practically unlimited expansion capabilities.
• WP plugins allow anyone to have a site that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your website with new capabilities and enhancements.
• Some plugins offer more advanced features and may require some configuration.

Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Many Are) 100% FREE!

Like many themes, tens of thousands of WordPress plugins are currently available for WordPress users … and many of these great plugins are 100% FREE!

You can access thousands of plugins from the Free WordPress Plugin Repository …

As previously mentioned, you will find plugins that will do just about everything you need done.

There are plugins for:

• Web Site Administration
• Content Syndication
• Online Traffic Generation
• User Interactivity
• Social Sharing
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Analysis Applications
• Blog SEO

You can enhance a website with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• User Surveys
• Managing banners
• E-commerce (from managing single sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site from English to French)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your blog
• Set appointments and appointment reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Hide certain from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your posts and pages
• Import content from different CMS platforms
• Perform bulk data edits
• Block SPAM
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. display Facebook posts)
• Inserting code and script elements into your content
• Add formatted tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map of your business location
• Syndicate your posts automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and many others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you practically limitless business flexibility. If you plan to build a website, or your existing site wasn’t built using WordPress, then consider getting a WordPress site or blog in the future, or you will be missing out on some serious features.

In case you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using WP plugins, let’s take a look at some practical advantages of adding a plugin to your website.

For example, if you need to publish private content, you can install plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on your post inaccessible, or create a full membership site with personal login details for each user …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to improve your site in so many different ways. From adding functionality that will improve your business, your web users’ experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

To increasing your site’s reach and visibility across multiple social networks and search engines …

You can also add advanced functionality to your website using inexpensive paid WP plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that automate functionality on your site such as displaying customer testimonials and booking events …

And even run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to code the same applications for you …

You can also take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that will let you engage better with web visitors, clients and registered site members …

For example, your visitors can:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with increased exposure).
• Share your posts with other online users on social media.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with other users using forums or even set up a private social network on your site.
• Engage with members of your team using live web conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Dial your business directly from their smart phones while visiting your site
• Get help via a dedicated client helpdesk
• And much more …

You can also integrate sophisticated enterprise solutions with a WP “front end”. This lets you manage your business marketing, while the third-party application handles the technical functions …

WP Plugins – Some Useful Tips

• There are loads of good plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with too many plugins, as this will begin to affect your website’s performance and page loading speed. It can also create more maintenance issues for you as a result of possible errors.
• Install only the plugins you really use. Delete any plugins from your site, as these use additional resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with very little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering paid WordPress plugins, make sure you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of our WP plugin recommendations for more information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think carefully before using it on your website or blog. WordPress changes on a frequent basis and outdated WordPress plugins can create issues.
• Ensure that you always upgrade your plugins to their most recent version. Outdated plugin not only can cause conflicts, they could also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WP plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most popular content management system in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand without spending thousands of dollars on web developers.

One last thing about WordPress plugins:

Whatever feature you want for your web site, you can be sure that a WP plugin probably exists that will do what you want, and that this plugin will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be reasonably affordable.

(Whatever you need done, there’s a WordPress plugin for that!)

And, if by chance this WordPress plugin is not available, then it can probably be written for your business for a very reasonable price.

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of WP plugins – what they are and how they can help enhance the functionality of your WordPress web site. See our published posts to learn about more great plugins that we recommend using.

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