Tag: What Are Plugins

One of the most powerful advantages of building a website with WordPress is the ability to easily expand your WP web site’s functionality using inexpensive (even completely free) applications called plugins.

Understanding WordPress Plugins

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

You download and install an app!

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

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

A plugin is similar to an app. You install a software that provides new functionality to your WP website or blog …

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

Typically, expanding the functionality of an existing web site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new feature or enhancement is, this can become fairly expensive, especially if website developers have to add new code or edit code or develop scripts to integrate with your current site.

This is also applicable when creating a new web site. Businesses will often spend upfront on features or customizations they may not need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we recommend considering a modular strategy to setting up a web site and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine if you could:

1) Start simply with minimal expense involved. Get your business web presence up and running quickly, then …

2) As new features are needed, add new applications with a few clicks of the mouse that integrate with your existing website and blog, giving your website an entirely new and expanded range of possibilities, and …

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

Well, this is just what a plugin lets you do!

Benefits Of Using WP Plugins

Earlier, we compared plugins with smartphone apps. In a similar way that many apps are free to download and some apps may cost a little money, the same applies with plugins.

In fact, thousands of plugins can be 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 WP plugin to the cost of paying for professional web development services to get similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are priced quite cheaply.

Also, because WordPress is an Open Source application, anybody can create, edit and customize any part of the code. This has allowed many third-party software developers to enhance the WPsoftware.

• WordPress plugins allow you to start simply with a simple website and add new features and enhancements to your site only as necessary.
• WordPress plugins let you add practically unlimited functionality to any website quickly, easily and really cheaply.
• Plugins give you virtually unlimited expansion capabilities.
• WP plugins allow non-technical website owners to own a digital presence that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your site with instant new capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more extensive features and require some initial configuration.

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

Just like themes, tens of thousands of great WordPress plugins are available to WordPress users … for FREE!

You can view and download thousands of plugins from the Free WP Plugin Repository …

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

WordPress plugin categories cover:

• Web Site Administration
• Content Distribution
• Traffic
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Connectivity
• Uploading Media Files – Video, Graphics & Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales Automation
• Increasing Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Monitoring & Reporting Tools
• Website SEO

For example, you can enhance a WordPress site with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Rotating advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single ordering with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your pages from English to Portuguese)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Faster page loading
• Managing events
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your site
• Set up appointments and appointment reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect users from missing pages to other areas on your site or other sites
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide page content
• Migrate information from non-WordPress platforms
• Search and replace data
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Inserting HTML and script elements into your posts
• Add formatted tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google local search
• Add business location maps
• Publicize your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you practically limitless business flexibility. If you plan to build a website for your business, or your existing website wasn’t built with WordPress, then consider choosing WordPress in the future.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let me show you some practical advantages of installing an inexpensive plugin on your web site.

For example, if you need to protect your content, you can install plugins to make an area of your post inaccessible, or create a professional membership site with customized login details for all users …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to improve your web presence in lots of ways. From installing functionality that will improve your business, your web users’ experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

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

You can also add advanced functionality to your website using inexpensive premium WordPress plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that integrate and automate processes on your website like managing customer testimonials and booking events …

And also set up a complete bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying web developers to build custom applications for you …

You can also 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 blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with additional exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on social media.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with your team via forums or even set up an online social network on your own domain.
• Engage with members of your team using live chats
• Dial your business directly from their laptops when visiting your site
• Open support tickets
• And much more …

You can also integrate sophisticated enterprise-level solutions with a WP “front end”. This enables you to control the content that your visitors will see on your website, while the third-party application handles the technological side of things …

Additional Things You Should Know About Plugins

• There are loads of WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with too many plugins, as this will eventually affect your website’s performance and page loading speed. It can also create more maintenance work for you as a consequence of possible conflicts and errors.
• Only keep those plugins that you really plan to use. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these use resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive very little to no support from the plugin author. When considering paid WordPress plugins, make sure you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of our plugin reviews for more information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before installing it on your website or blog. The WordPress core application changes often and out-of-date plugins can cause issues.
• Ensure to always maintain your plugins updated. Outdated plugin not only can create errors, they could also contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most preferred content management system in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add instant features to their web presence without spending thousands of dollars on web development costs.

One last thing regarding plugins:

If there is any feature you want for your web presence, you can be sure that a plugin already exists that will do just what you need, and that it will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the cost to buy it will be reasonable.

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

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

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of plugins – what plugins are and how they can enhance the functionality of your blog. See our related posts to learn more about using WordPress plugins.

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