Tag: What Are Plugins

One of the most unique benefits of using WordPress is that you can quickly enhance your WP web site’s functionality using plugins.

Understanding Plugins

Like most of us, you most likely own a cell phone. What happens when you want to access something new on your device like a new game or a new tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little software application that is very simple and easy to install and immediately adds new features and functionality to any mobile device.

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

A plugin is like an app. You simply install a little piece of software that provides new functionality to your website …

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

Typically, if you decide to add a new feature to your web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancements, this could get quite expensive, particularly if it involves programming code.

This also applies to creating a new web site. Businesses will often invest upfront for added bells and whistles they probably will never need.

To avoid incurring unnecessary expenses, we recommend considering a modular strategy to growing your digital presence presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As you need new features, install new software modules with a few mouse clicks that integrate seamlessly with your existing website, and give your website a completely new range of practical features and capabilities, and also …

3) Cost not a single cent more to download and install on your site?

Well, that’s precisely what a plugin enables you to do!

Benefits Of Using WP Plugins

I started this blog post by comparing WordPress plugins with ’apps’. Just like some apps are free to download and some cost a little money, so do WP plugins.

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

WordPress plugins that cost money are referred to as “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare these to the price of hiring a professional web developer to add similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are generally very inexpensive.

Also, because WordPress makes its source code publicly available, anybody can create, modify and customize any part of the code. This has allowed thousands of professional web developers to create more new tools that “plug into” WordPress than you can probably imagine.

• WP plugins let you start simply with a basic website and then add new features and enhancements to your site only when required.
• WP plugins let you add almost endless functionality to any website quickly and inexpensively.
• WP plugins give you virtually endless expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow business owners to have a website that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your site with instant new capabilities and features.
• Some plugins are slightly more complex and may require some configuration.

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

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

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

As mentioned earlier, you can find plugins that will do just about anything you could possibly need a web site to do.

There are WordPress plugins for:

• User Administration
• Content Distribution
• Driving Web Visitors
• User Interactivity
• Social Sharing
• Managing Media – Video, Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales Automation
• Increasing Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Reporting Applications
• Securing Your WP Site

For example, you can add features to a business online presence with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Managing ad banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to French)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage management
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your website
• Set up appointments and reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Hide pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide page content sections
• Migrate information from non-WordPress platforms
• Perform bulk content replacements
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. display Facebook posts)
• Inserting HTML and code elements into your website’s header and footer
• Add tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google local search
• Add a map
• Publish your content automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and many others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, WP plugins give you virtually endless business flexibility. If you plan to build a web site for your business, or your existing site isn’t built with WordPress, then consider getting a WP site or blog built on your domain, or you will be missing out on some serious features.

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

For example, if you want content protection, you can install plugins to make an area of your page inaccessible, or create a professional paid membership site with separate login details for users …

As mentioned previously, you can use free plugins to enhance your business site in lots of ways. From adding features that enhance your business, your website visitors’ experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

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

You can also add complex features to your website using relatively inexpensive paid WordPress plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that automate functions on your pages such as displaying customer testimonials and booking events …

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

You can also take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that will let you engage more with web visitors, customers and registered site users …

For example, your visitors can:

• Leave comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with increased exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on various social sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with your team members using online forums or even set up a private social network on your own site.
• Engage with members of your team via live chats
• Dial your business directly from their smart phones while visiting your pages
• Open support tickets
• And so much more …

You can also integrate sophisticated “back end” solutions with a WP “front end”. This lets you manage your business marketing, while the 3rd-party application handles the technological functions …

Useful Tips About WP Plugins

• There are so many plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with too many plugins, as this can start to affect your website’s resources and page loading speed. It also creates more maintenance issues for you as a result of possible conflicts and errors.
• Install only the plugins that you really need to use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use server resources.
• Many free plugins often come with little to no support from the plugin author. When considering paid WordPress plugins, we recommend that you check some reviews online and see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of our plugin recommendations for more useful 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 updates on a frequent basis and older plugins that have not been updated can cause conflicts.
• Make sure to always keep your plugins updated to their latest version. Older plugins not only can cause problems, they could also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, WP plugins are an important element of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most popular CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand without spending thousands of dollars on web development costs.

One last thing about WordPress plugins:

If there is a feature you need for your website, you can guarantee that a plugin currently exists that will do just what you need, and that this plugin will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the price will be minimal.

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

And, if by any chance this WordPress plugin has not been created yet, then a custom plugin that does exactly what you need it to do can probably be coded for your business for a reasonable price.

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

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