Tag: What Are Plugins

One of the most powerful benefits of building a website using WordPress is that you can quickly enhance your WordPress website’s functionality using applications called plugins.

About WordPress Plugins

No doubt, you most likely own a device like a mobile phone. What do you do when you want to access something new on your device like a new application, game or a new business productivity tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

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

(Just like there are social sharing apps for mobile phones …)

A WordPress plugin is very much like an app. You download and install a software application that provides new functionality to your website or blog …

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

Normally, if you want to add a new feature to a site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancements, this cost can be significant, especially if it involves modifying code.

This is also applicable to starting a web site. Companies sometimes fork out money for features or customizations they may not need.

For this reason, we recommend using a sustainable strategy when growing your website and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply with minimal expense involved. Get a basic, professional web site up and running fast, then …

2) As more features and functionality are needed, simply install new applications with only a few mouse clicks directly from within your WP admin section, giving your site a whole new range of capabilities and functionality, and also …

3) Cost not a single cent more to download and install on your site?

Well, that’s just what plugins allow you to do!

WP Plugins – Benefits & Advantages

I started this blog post by comparing WordPress plugins with ’apps’. Just like many apps are free to download and some apps cost a little money, so do plugins.

In fact, thousands of powerful plugins can be downloaded to your site for free.

Plugins that you purchase are referred to as “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to get similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. ”paid”) plugins are typically quite inexpensive.

Also, since WordPress makes its source code available to everyone, any web developer can create, modify and customize any part of the WordPress code. This has enabled thousands of professional web development companies to enhance the WordPresssoftware.

• WP plugins allow you to start off with just a basic yet professional online business presence and add new features and enhancements to your site when required.
• Plugins let you add practically unlimited features to your web site easily, quickly and cheaply.
• Plugins give you almost unlimited expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow ”non-techies” to have a website that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your website immediate capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins offer more extensive options and require some initial configuring.

WP Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Often) Completely FREE!

Like WordPress themes, thousands of WordPress plugins are made available to WordPress users … for FREE!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find WP plugins that can do almost anything you want done.

Plugin categories cover:

• Website Administration
• Content Management
• Traffic
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Engagement
• Uploading Media Files – Videos, Graphics & Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales Automation
• Increasing Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Analysis Tools
• Blog Optimization

You can add features to your business online presence with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Managing advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User feedback forms
• Automatic language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your website from English to Italian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your blog
• Set up client appointments and reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Hide pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your pages and posts
• Import content from other publishing platforms
• Search and replace data
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Insert HTML and code elements into your posts
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search results
• Add a map
• Post your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and others
• Display countdown timers (for special offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As it’s clear to see, WP plugins give you practically limitless business scalability. If you plan to build a web site for your business, or your existing site was not built with WordPress, then consider choosing WordPress in the future.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WordPress plugins are, let’s take a look at how you can benefit by simply adding a plugin to your site.

For example, if you want content protection, you can install plugins to make an area of your post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a complete paid membership site with separate login details for every member …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to enhance your site in so many different ways. From adding features that enhance your business, your website visitors’ experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

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

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your website using inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that automate processes on your pages such as managing customer testimonials and booking events …

And even set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying software developers to build custom functionality for you …

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

For example, your visitors can:

• Post comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Share your content with other online users on social media.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with your team through online forums or even set up a private online community on your own domain.
• Engage with members of your team using live video chats
• Dial your business directly from their cellphones when visiting your site
• Open support tickets
• And so much more …

You can also integrate complex “back end” solutions within a WordPress “front end”. This enables you to control your business marketing, while your third-party application handles the technical areas …

Plugins – Useful Things You Should Know

• There are loads of plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your server with too many plugins, as this will invariably affect your website’s performance and page loading speed. It also means more maintenance work for you resulting from possible conflicts.
• Install only the plugins that you really need. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these use server resources.
• Many free plugins normally receive little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing premium plugins, ensure that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we publish on this site for additional information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think carefully before using it. WordPress is updated on a regular basis and outdated plugins can cause conflicts.
• Ensure to always keep your plugins updated. Outdated plugins not only can cause errors, they could also contain vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, WP plugins are an important feature of WordPress and contribute to making it the most downloaded CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add instant functionality to their website without having to spend thousands of dollars on web developers.

One last thing regarding WP plugins:

If there is a functionality you want for your web presence, you can be sure that a someone has probably already authored one that will do what you need it to do, and that this plugin will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the price will be reasonable.

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

And, if by chance this WP plugin is not available, then one can probably be coded for your business for a very reasonable price.

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

***

***