Tag: What Are WordPress Plugins

One of the main features of the WordPress website publishing software is the ability to quickly and easily enhance your WP website’s functionality using plugins.

About WP Plugins

No doubt, you most likely use a smart phone. What happens when you want to access something new on your phone like a new game or a new business tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a software that is very simple and easy to install and integrates new features and functionality into a smart device.

(Just as you will find social sharing apps for smart devices …)

A WordPress plugin is like an app. You install a little piece of software that adds new functionality to your web site …

(… there are also social sharing plugins for WordPress sites!)

Typically, if you plan to expand the functionality of an existing web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the features or enhancements are, this could become quite expensive, particularly if web developers have to create new code or edit templates or install scripts that integrate into your current set up.

This also applies when creating a web site. Businesses will often spend money in advance on additional components they probably will never need.

For this reason, we suggest a cost-effective strategy to setting up a web site and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a professional web presence up and running fast, then …

2) As more features and functionality become necessary, install new applications with only a couple of mouse clicks that integrate with your web site, giving your site an entirely new range of practical functionality, and …

3) Cost not a single dollar more to add to your website?

Well, that’s just what WP plugins let you do!

WordPress Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

Earlier, we compared plugins with ’apps’. Just like some apps are free to download and some may cost a little money, the same applies with WordPress plugins.

In fact, many plugins can be downloaded to your site for free.

WordPress plugins that you buy are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the price of purchasing a Premium plugin to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to add similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins cost very little.

Also, since WordPress makes its code publicly available, anybody can create, rewrite and customize any portion of the WP code. This has allowed many professional web developers to enhance the core software application.

• WordPress plugins let you start off with just a basic yet professional site and add new features and enhancements to your site only as required.
• WP plugins let you add practically endless functionality to your web presence easily and inexpensively.
• WP plugins give you virtually endless expanding capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow non-technical website owners to own a website that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your website or blog instant new enhancements and features.
• Some plugins are a little more complex and require some initial configuration.

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

Like many themes, thousands of great WP plugins are available to WP users … often at no cost!

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

As mentioned earlier, you can find WordPress plugins that will do almost everything you want done.

Plugin categories cover:

• Website Administration
• Content Distribution
• Online Traffic Generation
• User Interactivity
• Social Sharing
• Media Management Automation
• Increasing Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Analysis
• Securing Your WP Web Site

For example, you can add features to your WP site with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Surveys
• Managing banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your pages from English to Spanish)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell spots on your website
• Set up client appointments and reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect affiliate links
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Hide certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your posts and pages
• Migrate data from different publishing applications
• Search and replace content
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. display Facebook posts)
• Inserting code and code elements into your posts, pages and sidebar menus
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map of your business location
• Distribute your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and many others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you limitless business scalability. If you are planning to build a website, or your existing web site was not built using WordPress, then consider getting one in the future, or you will be missing out on some serious functionality.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WordPress plugins are, let me show you how you can benefit instantly by simply installing an inexpensive plugin on your web site.

For example, if you want content protection, you can install plugins to make a section of a page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a complete paid membership site with separate login details for users …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to enhance your web site in so many ways. From installing features that will improve your business, your site’s user experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

To extending your site’s reach and visibility across many social networks and search engines …

You can also add advanced functionality to your website using inexpensive premium WordPress plugins. For example, you can install plugins that automate processes on your pages such as user feedback and event registration management …

And even set up a complete bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying programmers to code custom applications for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of native WordPress commenting features and plugins that will enhance visitor engagement …

For example, your visitors can:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site added exposure).
• Bookmark your content on various social sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with your team members via forums or even set up an online social network on your domain.
• Engage with your support team through live video chats
• Call your business from their laptops while browsing your website
• Open support tickets
• And much more …

You can also integrate complex “back end” applications with a WP “front end”. This lets you manage the content that your visitors will see on your website, while your 3rd-party application handles the technological aspects …

Additional Things To Know About WordPress Plugins

• There are loads of plugins available. Be careful of overloading your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can eventually begin to affect your site’s performance and site loading times. It also means more maintenance issues for you resulting from potential conflicts.
• Install only those plugins you really use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these utilize resources.
• Many free plugins often come with little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing 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 offering support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check our plugin recommendations for additional 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 installing it. The WordPress core software updates frequently and older plugins that have not been updated can cause issues.
• Always update your plugins. Older plugins not only can create errors and conflicts, they may also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an important aspect of WordPress and contribute to making it the most downloaded content management system available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand quickly without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing regarding WP plugins:

Whatever functionality you want for your website, you can be sure that a someone has probably already authored one that will do just what you need it to do, and that it will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be fairly inexpensive.

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

And, if by chance this plugin has not been created yet, then a custom plugin that does precisely what you would like it to do can certainly be coded for you for a reasonable price.

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of plugins – what plugins are and how they can significantly expand your blog. See our related posts section to learn about more useful plugins that we recommend using.

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