Tag: What Are Plugins

One of the main features of the WordPress web content management software is that you can easily enhance your WordPress site’s functionality using applications called plugins.

Understanding Plugins

No doubt, you most likely use a device like a cell phone. What happens when you would like to access something new on your phone like a new game or a new tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is very simple and easy to install and integrates new features and functionality into your smart phone.

(Just like you can find social sharing apps for mobile devices …)

A plugin is similar to an app. You install and activate a software application that provides new functionality to your website …

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

Almost always, expanding the functionality of a web site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the features or enhancements are, things can get quite expensive, particularly if website developers need to create new code or modify templates or install programs that integrate into your current set up.

This also applies when developing a web site. Organizations often invest money in components they probably will never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we suggest a cost-effective strategy when developing your website and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

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

2) As you need new features, add new applications with only a couple of mouse clicks that integrate seamlessly with your site, giving your web site an entirely new and expanded range of features and functionality, and also …

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

Well, this is precisely what a WordPress plugin lets you do!

WP Plugins – Benefits

I began this article by comparing plugins with ’apps’. In a similar way that many apps are free to download and some cost a little bit of money, the same applies to plugins.

In fact, thousands of plugins are freely available for WordPress users.

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

Also, because WordPress makes its source code available to everyone, any person can create, edit and customize any part of the WordPress code. This has allowed thousands of third-party software development professionals to enhance and contribute to the core software application.

• WP plugins let you get started with just a basic yet professional site and then expand if necessary.
• WP plugins allow you to add almost endless functionality to any website quickly, easily and inexpensively.
• Plugins give you virtually unlimited expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow non-technical users to own a website that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your website or blog with immediate capabilities and features.
• Some plugins can be slightly more advanced and require some initial configuration.

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

Like many themes, loads of great plugins are currently available to WordPress users … for FREE!

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find plugins that can do just about anything you can think of.

WP plugin categories cover:

• Website Management
• Content Syndication
• Traffic
• User Interactivity
• Social Connectivity
• Inserting Media Files – Videos, Graphics & Images, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales & Advertising Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Reporting
• Web Site Security

You can add features to a WP site with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Managing advertising banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation (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.
• Offline storage management
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your blog
• Set up appointments and appointment reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Hide certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect page content sections
• Migrate data from non-WP platforms
• Search and replace data
• Block SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
• Inserting HTML and script elements into your posts
• Add tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google local search
• Add a map of your business location
• Post your posts automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and others
• Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom 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 using WordPress, then consider getting a WP site or blog in the future, or you could be missing out on some serious functionality.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WordPress plugins are, let me show you some practical advantages of adding a plugin to your web site.

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

As mentioned previously, you can use free plugins to improve your website in lots of ways. From adding functionality that enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your ability to analyze website data …

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

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your website using relatively inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can install plugins that automate tasks on your website like displaying customer testimonials and booking events …

And also run a complete bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to build these functionality for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that can enhance your site’s interactivity …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Leave comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Share your posts with other web visitors on social networks.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with other users using online forums or even set up a private online community on your own domain.
• Engage with members of your team via live web conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Dial your business directly from their cellphones while visiting your pages
• Open a support ticket
• And much more …

You can also integrate sophisticated “back end” applications within a WordPress “front end”. This enables you to manage your business sales and marketing, while your third-party application handles the technological side of things …

WordPress Plugins – Useful Tips

• There are loads of WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with too many plugins, as this can invariably begin to affect your website’s resources and page loading times. It can also create more maintenance work for you as a result of possible conflicts and errors.
• Only keep the plugins you really use. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these also consume resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering paid plugins, we recommend that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we publish here for more information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think carefully before using it on your website. The WordPress core software updates on a frequent basis and older plugins that have not been updated can create conflicts.
• Always upgrade your plugins. Outdated plugin not only can create problems, they may also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most popular CMS in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new functionality to their website without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web development.

One last thing on the topic of WordPress plugins:

Whatever functionality you need for your web site, you can guarantee that a plugin probably exists that will do exactly what you want, and that this plugin will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that it will be fairly affordable.

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

And, if by chance such a plugin has not been created yet, then one can certainly be created for you at a reasonable cost.

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

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