Tag: What Are Plugins

One of the main benefits of using WordPress is that you can quickly expand your WordPress website or blog’s functionality using plugins.

What Are WordPress Plugins?

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

You download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is very easy to install and instantly adds new features and functionality to your mobile phone.

(Just as you can find social sharing apps …)

A plugin is very much like an app. You download and install a software that adds new functionality to your WP site …

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

Almost always, adding new features to a site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, the cost can be significant, particularly if it requires editing code.

This is also applicable to setting up a website. Companies tend to spend up front on additional components they may probably never need.

To reduce your costs, we recommend a cost-effective approach when setting up a web site and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As the need becomes apparent, add new applications with only a few mouse clicks that integrate seamlessly with your website, giving your website a whole new range of useful functionality, and also …

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

Well, this is exactly what WordPress plugins let you do!

WordPress Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

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

In fact, loads of plugins can be installed on your sites.

WP plugins that cost money are referred to as ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of paying for web development services to add similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are priced quite cheaply.

Also, as WordPress makes its source code available to everyone, any web developer can create, modify and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has allowed thousands of professional web developers to create more plugins that “plug into” the WordPress software than you can probably imagine.

• WP plugins allow you to get started with only a simple yet professional site and then expand only as necessary.
• Plugins allow you to add almost endless functionality to any website quickly and cheaply.
• WP plugins give your digital business presence practically endless expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow ”non-techies” to own a website that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your website with immediate capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins can be a little more complex and may require some initial configuring.

WordPress Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Often) 100% FREE!

Just like WP themes, tens of thousands of plugins are currently available for WP users … for FREE!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find WordPress plugins that will do almost anything you can possibly want your web site to do.

WP plugin categories cover:

• Site Management
• Content Syndication
• Driving Web Visitors
• User Engagement
• Social Connectivity
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Reporting
• Optimizing Your WordPress Web Site

You can add features to your WordPress site with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• User Surveys
• Rotating advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce stores with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonial forms
• 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
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Cloud storage integration
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your website
• Set client appointments and appointment reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect users from specified pages to other areas on your site or other sites
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Hide certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect post content sections
• Import data from non-WP platforms
• Perform bulk content replacements
• Block SPAM
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. display Facebook posts)
• Inserting scripts and code elements into your posts, pages and sidebar menus
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Post your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As you can clearly see, WP plugins give you practically limitless possibilities. If you are planning to build a web site for your business, or your existing website was not built with WordPress, then consider getting one added to your domain, or you will be missing out on some serious features.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let’s take a look at some practical advantages of adding an inexpensive plugin to your website.

For example, if you need to publish private content, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on your page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a professional paid membership site with personal login details for all users …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to enhance your business site in so many ways. From adding features that will improve your business, your web users’ experience and your ability to analyze visitor data …

To increasing your business reach and visibility across social networks and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated features to your site using relatively inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can install plugins that integrate and automate processes on your website such as user feedback and event registrations management …

And also run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying software developers to build the same applications for you …

You can also take advantage of native WordPress commenting features and plugins that can allow you to engage more with visitors, customers and registered site users …

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site increased exposure).
• Share your content with other web visitors on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with your team members through forums or even set up an online community on your own site.
• Engage with members of your team through live web conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Dial your business from their smart phones when visiting your pages
• Get help and support via a user helpdesk
• And so much more …

Finally you, can even integrate complex enterprise applications using a WP “front end”. This enables you to manage your business marketing, while your third-party application handles the technical side of things …

Additional Tips About WordPress Plugins

• There are lots of plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your server with too many plugins, as this can affect your website’s performance and page loading speed. It also creates more maintenance work for you resulting from potential conflicts and errors.
• Install only the plugins that you really need to use. Delete any plugins from your site, as these utilize resources.
• Many free plugins often receive little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing premium WordPress plugins, ensure that you check around a little and understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we publish here for additional expert information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before installing it on your website. WordPress changes regularly and outdated WP plugins can cause errors.
• Always keep all plugins up-to-date. Outdated plugins not only can cause errors, they could also have security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most preferred CMS in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand without spending thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing on the subject of plugins:

If there is any feature or functionality you want for your website, you can be sure that a plugin already exists that will do what you want, and that it can either be accessed at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be fairly affordable.

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

And, if by any chance this WordPress plugin has not been created yet, then it can most certainly be created for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of WordPress plugins – what plugins are and how they can significantly improve your web site. See our related posts section to learn about more useful plugins that we recommend using.

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