Tag: What Are Plugins

One of the main advantages of building a digital presence with the WordPress web site management software is the ability to easily expand your WP site’s functionality using applications called plugins.

About Plugins

No doubt, you most likely own a device like a cell phone. What do you do when you want to access something new on your device like a new application, game or a new tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little software that is simple and easy to install and instantly integrates new features and functionality into any mobile device.

(Just as there are social sharing apps …)

A plugin is like an app. You simply download and install an application that provides new functionality to your WordPress website …

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

Almost always, expanding the functionality of your web site involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancement, things could become quite expensive, especially if it involves website development.

This also applies when developing a website. Organizations often spend upfront on features and options they may probably never need.

To reduce business expenses, we recommend using a cost-effective strategy when developing your website and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a professional business web presence up and running fast, then …

2) As you need new features or functionality, install new software modules with only a few mouse clicks directly from your admin area, giving your website or blog an entirely new and expanded range of practical capabilities, and also …

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

Well, that’s just what a WordPress plugin lets you do!

Benefits & Advantages Of Using WP Plugins

We began this article by comparing plugins with mobile apps. Just like many apps are free to download and some apps may cost a little money, so do plugins.

In fact, thousands of plugins can be installed on your websites.

WordPress plugins that you buy 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 get the same functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are generally quite inexpensive.

Also, since WordPress makes its code available to everyone, anybody can create, edit and customize any part of the WordPress code. This has allowed thousands of third-party software developers to create more new applications that plug seamlessly into WordPress than you can probably imagine.

• Plugins let you start off with only a basic yet professional site and then expand only if necessary.
• Plugins let you add almost unlimited features to any web site quickly, easily and quite cheaply.
• Plugins give your website virtually unlimited expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical users to own a website that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your website new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more advanced options and require some initial configuring.

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

Like themes, loads of WordPress plugins are currently available to WP users … often at no cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find WP plugins that will do almost anything you could think of.

There are plugins for:

• Blog Administration
• Content Management
• Online Traffic Generation
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Engagement
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Analysis Applications
• Blog Optimization

For example, you can enhance your WP site with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Surveys
• Display banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonial forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to Italian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell spots on your site
• Set appointments and appointment reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect affiliate pages
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Hide specific from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect post content sections
• Migrate information from other publishing applications
• Perform bulk content replacements
• Block SPAM
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
• Insert code and script elements into your pages
• Add tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced text formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add location maps
• Post your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and others
• Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As you can clearly see, WordPress plugins give you limitless possibilities. If you are planning to build a website or blog for your business, or your existing website was not built with WordPress, then consider getting one in the future, or you could be missing out on some serious functionality.

In case you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using WP plugins, let me show you some practical uses of installing an inexpensive plugin on your website.

For example, if you need to protect your content, you can install plugins to make a section of a page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full paid membership site with customized login details for users …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to improve your web site in lots of different ways. From adding new features that will enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

To extending your site’s reach and visibility across various social networks and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated features to your website using inexpensive premium WP plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that integrate and automate tasks on your website like user feedback and event registration management …

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

You can also take advantage of native WordPress commenting features and plugins that can increase user engagement …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Post comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Share your content with other web users on various social sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online with your team using forums or even set up an online community on your own site.
• Engage with members of your team through live webcam conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Call your business directly from their laptops when browsing your site
• Get help via a client helpdesk
• And so much more …

You can also integrate complex “back end” applications within a WordPress “front end”. This lets you manage your business marketing, while the 3rd-party application handles the technical aspects …

Plugins – Additional Information

• There are lots of WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can invariably affect your website’s performance and page loading speed. It also means more maintenance work for you resulting from possible errors.
• Install only those plugins that you really need. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use server resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering paid WordPress plugins, make sure you check some reviews online and understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of our plugin reviews for additional expert information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before installing it. The WordPress platform updates regularly and older plugins can create errors.
• Always maintain your plugins updated. Older plugins not only can create issues, they could also have security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WP plugins are an important component of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most popular CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new features to their website without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web development costs.

One last thing regarding plugins:

If there is a functionality you want for your web site, you can guarantee that a plugin probably exists that will do exactly what you need it to do, and that this plugin can either be accessed for FREE, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the price will be very reasonable.

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

And, if by any chance such a WP plugin is not available, then it can probably be coded for you at a reasonable cost.

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

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