Tag: What Are Plugins

One of the main benefits of choosing the WordPress platform is that you can quickly and easily increase your WordPress web site’s functionality using inexpensive called plugins.

What Are Plugins?

Like most people, you most likely have a smart phone. What do you do when you would like to access something new on your phone like a new software or a new business productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little software that is easy to install and instantly adds new features to your smart phone.

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

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

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

Normally, adding a new feature to a web site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new feature or enhancement is, the cost can be quite significant, especially if it involves website development.

This also applies to creating a new web site. Many organizations sometimes spend up-front on added bells and whistles they probably will never need.

To reduce costs, we recommend considering a modular approach when setting up a presence online presence and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and with minimal cost involved. Get a web site up and running quickly, then …

2) As the need becomes apparent, install new software modules with a few clicks of the mouse directly from your WP admin panel, to give your site an entirely new and expanded range of possibilities, and …

3) Cost not a single cent extra to install on your web site?

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

Benefits Of Using Plugins

I started this blog post by comparing plugins with mobile apps. In the same way that some apps are free to download and some apps may cost a little money, the same applies to plugins.

In fact, many plugins can be installed and activated on your sites.

Plugins that you purchase are referred to as “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of investing in web development services to get the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins cost very little.

Also, because WordPress makes its code available to everyone, any person can create, modify and customize any part of the WordPress code. This has enabled thousands of third-party web developers to enhance the WordPresssoftware.

• Plugins let you start off with a simple website and then add new features and enhancements to your site only when required.
• WordPress plugins let you add practically endless features to your web site quickly and cheaply.
• WordPress plugins give your web site virtually endless expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow business owners to have a digital presence that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your web site with instant new capabilities and enhancements.
• Some plugins offer more extensive options and may need some initial configuration.

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

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

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

As previously mentioned, you can find WP plugins that can do just about everything you can possibly need a website to do.

There are plugins for:

• User Administration
• Content Syndication
• Traffic
• User Engagement
• Social Monitoring
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting
• WordPress SEO

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

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Surveys
• Rotating ad banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Instant language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to German)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage integration
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell spots on your website
• Set up client appointments and appointment reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect users from broken pages to other pages on your site or other sites
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Hide pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your pages and posts
• Import information from different CMS platforms
• Search and replace content
• Block SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
• Inserting scripts and script elements into your pages
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add a map
• Publicize your posts automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you virtually endless business flexibility. If you plan to build a website for your business, or your existing website was not built with WordPress, then consider getting a WordPress site or blog in the future, or you could be missing out on some serious features.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let me show you some practical uses of adding a plugin to your site.

For example, if you need to protect your content, you can install plugins to make an area of a post or page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a complete membership site with personal login details for users …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to enhance your site in so many ways. From installing functionality that enhance your business, your web users’ experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

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

You can also add complex features to your website using relatively inexpensive premium WP plugins. For example, you can download plugins that automate functionality on your pages like customer feedback and event registrations management …

And also set up a complete bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying programmers to design the same functionality for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that can allow you to engage better with visitors, customers and registered site members …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Post 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 the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Share your posts with other web users on social networking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with other online users using online forums or even set up a private community on your site.
• Engage with your staff via live webcam conferencing and chatrooms
• Dial your business directly from their smart phones while browsing your site
• Open a support ticket
• And much more …

Finally you, can also integrate sophisticated 3rd-party solutions with a WP “front end”. This enables you to manage the content that your visitors see on your site, while the 3rd-party application handles the technological areas …

Some Useful Things You Should Know About Plugins

• There are so many plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will begin to affect your site’s resources and page loading times. It can also mean more maintenance issues for you as a result of possible conflicts and errors.
• Install only the plugins you really use. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these utilize server resources.
• Many free plugins normally come with little to no support from the plugin author. When considering paid plugins, make sure you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we publish on this site for more 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 changes on a regular basis and older plugins that have not been updated can cause conflicts.
• Make sure that you always maintain your plugins up-to-date. Older plugins not only can cause issues, they may also have vulnerabilities that could 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 downloaded content management system available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new functionality to their web presence without spending thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing on the subject of plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you need for your website, you can be sure that a WP plugin probably exists that will do what you want it to do, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that it will be surprisingly inexpensive.

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

And, if by chance such a WordPress plugin does not exist, then one can most certainly be created for you for a very reasonable price.

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

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