Tag: What Are Plugins

One of the main features of WordPress is the ability to quickly expand your WordPress site’s functionality using plugins.

About Plugins

Like most people, you probably have 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 productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

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

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

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

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

Normally, if you need to add new features to a site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the new feature or enhancement, things could become fairly expensive, especially if it requires modifying code.

This also applies when creating a website. Organizations will often fork out money in advance on extra bells and whistles they probably will never need.

For this reason, we suggest using a modular strategy to developing a website and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As the need for new capabilities or functionality becomes evident, simply add new software modules with only a few mouse clicks directly from within your dashboard area, giving your web site an entirely new and expanded range of practical capabilities, and also …

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

Well, this is just what a WP plugin enables you to do!

Plugins – Benefits

I began this blog post by comparing plugins with ’apps’. In the same way that some apps are free to download and some cost a little money, so do plugins.

In fact, loads of great plugins can be downloaded and installed on your websites.

Plugins that you buy are referred to as “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the cost of a Premium WordPress plugin to the price of investing in web development services to get similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are generally quite inexpensive.

Also, because WordPress makes its code publicly available, anybody can create, rewrite and customize any part of the code. This has enabled many third-party web developers to create more tools that enhance the WordPress platform than you can imagine.

• WordPress plugins let you start simply with a simple web site and then expand if necessary.
• WP plugins allow you to add practically endless functionality to any site quickly and inexpensively.
• WP plugins give your web site almost unlimited expansion capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow ”non-techies” to have a site that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your site with instant new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins can be slightly more complex and could require some configuring.

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

Just like themes, tens of thousands of great WordPress plugins are made available to WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find WP plugins that will do just about everything you need your website to do.

There are plugins for:

• Blog Administration
• Content Syndication
• Traffic
• User Interactivity
• Social Media
• Media Utilities Automation
• Increasing Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Analysis Applications
• WP Optimization

You can expand a WP site with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Display advertising banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User feedback forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your site’s content 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.
• Offline storage integration
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your site
• Set client appointments and appointment reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and send you reports
• Redirect users from broken pages to other areas on your site or other websites
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Exclude certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your posts and pages
• Migrate data from non-WP platforms
• Perform bulk content replacements
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Inserting scripts and script elements into your site’s header or footer
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search results
• Add a map of your business location
• Distribute your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and others
• Display countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

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

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

For example, if you want to protect your content, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a complete paid membership site with personal login details for every member …

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

To extending your site’s reach across social media and search engines …

You can also add advanced functionality to your website using inexpensive paid WordPress plugins. For example, you can install plugins that integrate and automate functions on your website such as customer feedback and event registration management …

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

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that can make your site even more interactive …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Leave comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site increased exposure).
• Share your posts with other online visitors on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with your team through online forums or even set up an online community on your domain.
• Engage with your support team using live webcam conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Dial your business from their devices while browsing your website
• Get support via a user helpdesk
• And much more …

Finally you, can even integrate complex “back end” solutions within a WP “front end”. This lets you control the content that your visitors will see on your site, while your third-party application handles the technological areas …

Useful Information About WP Plugins

• There are so many plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can affect your site’s performance and site loading speed. It also creates more maintenance issues for you resulting from potential conflicts.
• Only keep those plugins that you really need to use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these also utilize resources.
• Many free plugins often come with very little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering premium WP plugins, we recommend that you check some reviews online and understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of our WP plugin reviews for additional helpful 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 site. WordPress updates on a regular basis and older plugins that have not been updated can create problems.
• Ensure to always maintain your plugins updated. Older plugin not only can cause errors and conflicts, they may also have security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, WP plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most used web open source application available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new functionality to their website without spending thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing about plugins:

If there is a feature or functionality you want for your web presence, you can guarantee that a plugin already exists that will do just what you want, and that this plugin can either be downloaded at no cost, 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 any chance this plugin has not been created yet, then a custom plugin that does precisely what you want it to do can probably be coded for your business for a very reasonable price.

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

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