Tag: What Are Plugins

One of the main benefits of the WordPress content publishing platform is the ability to quickly enhance your WordPress web site’s functionality using applications called plugins.

About Plugins

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

You download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is very easy to install and adds new functionality to a mobile device.

(Just like there are social sharing apps for smart devices …)

A WordPress plugin is like an app. You simply download and install a software application that adds new functionality to your site …

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

Almost always, if you want to expand the functionality of a website, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the new features or enhancement, this cost can be quite significant, especially if it requires website development.

This is also applicable when creating a new website. Companies tend to invest money in advance in features they may not need.

For this reason, we suggest a cost-effective strategy when developing your presence online presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As you need new features and functionality, install new software modules with a couple of mouse clicks directly from within your administration area, and give your web site an entirely new and expanded range of practical functionality, and …

3) Cost not a single dollar more to install on your site?

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

Plugins – Benefits

Earlier, we compared WP plugins with smartphone apps. Just like some apps are free to download and some may cost a little bit of money, so do plugins.

In fact, many plugins are available at no cost to WP users.

WordPress 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 cost very little.

Also, because WordPress makes its source code available to everyone, any person can create, rewrite and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has allowed many professional web development professionals to enhance the WPsoftware.

• Plugins allow you to get started simply with just a basic yet professional site and expand only as required.
• Plugins let you add practically endless functionality to any web site quickly and really inexpensively.
• WordPress plugins give your online presence virtually unlimited expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical users to own a website that they can manage.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your website or blog immediate capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins are slightly more advanced and may require some configuring.

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

Just like themes, loads of WP plugins are available for WP users … and many of these great plugins are 100% FREE!

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

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

WP plugin categories cover:

• Web Site Management
• Content Management
• Driving Web Traffic
• User Interactivity
• Social Media
• Media Management Automation
• Increasing Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting
• Web Site Security

For example, you can add features to a WP site with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Surveys
• Managing ad banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User feedback forms
• Instant language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your website from English to German)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage management
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell spots on your website
• Set client appointments and reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect web pages
• 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 page content sections
• Migrate information from non-WordPress platforms
• Search and replace content
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Inserting scripts and script elements into your blog’s header or footer
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Publish your posts automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon 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 business scalability. If you plan to build a web site for your business, or your existing web site isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider using WordPress in the future.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let me show you some practical uses of installing an inexpensive plugin on your web site.

For example, if you want to publish private content, you can use plugins to make a section of your page or post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full paid membership site with personal login details for all users …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to enhance your business site in lots of different ways. From installing new features that improve your business, your web users’ experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

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

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your website using relatively inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can purchase plugins that automate functions on your website like user feedback and event registrations management …

And also run a complete bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to build custom applications for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that will make your site even more interactive …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with increased exposure).
• Share your posts with other online visitors on social networking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with your support team using forums or even set up a private online community on your domain.
• Engage with your team through live chats
• Call your business directly from their cellphones when browsing your pages
• Get support via a customer support helpdesk
• And so much more …

You can even integrate sophisticated “back end” applications with a WordPress “front end”. This enables you to manage the content that your visitors will see on your site, while your third-party application handles the technological side of things …

Useful Things To Know About WordPress Plugins

• There are lots of plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will invariably start to affect your website’s performance and page loading times. It also means more maintenance work for you resulting from possible conflicts and errors.
• Install only those plugins you really need. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing premium WP plugins, ensure that you check some reviews online and understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of our plugin reviews for more helpful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think carefully before using it. WordPress changes on a regular basis and older plugins that have not been updated can cause conflicts.
• Ensure that you always upgrade your plugins to the latest version. Outdated plugins not only can create errors, they may also contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an important element of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most used content management system available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add new functionality to their web presence without having to spend thousands of dollars on web development costs.

One last thing about WP plugins:

Whatever feature you need for your web presence, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already developed one that will do just what you want, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be surprisingly inexpensive.

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

And, if by any chance such a WP plugin does not exist, then it can most certainly be written for your business for a very reasonable price.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can improve your WP website. See our related posts section to learn more about using WP plugins.

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