Tag: What Are Plugins

One of the main benefits of building an online presence with the WordPress platform is the ability to quickly and easily expand your WP website or blog’s functionality using plugins.

About Plugins

No doubt, you probably use a device like a mobile phone. What do you do when you would like to access something new on your phone like a new application, game or business productivity tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is really simple and easy to install and adds new features to your smart device.

(Just as you will find social sharing apps for mobile phones …)

A plugin is really similar to an app. You simply install a software application that adds new functionality to your website …

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

Generally, if you plan to add new features to your web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, things could get quite expensive, especially if web developers need to create new code or modify code or install scripts to integrate into your existing site.

This is also applicable when setting up a website or business blog. Businesses tend to invest in features they probably will never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we recommend a modular approach when developing a web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply with minimal cost involved. Get your web presence up and running fast, then …

2) As you need new features, add new applications with a few clicks of the mouse that integrate with your existing website, and give your web site an entirely new and expanded range of useful capabilities, and …

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

Well, that’s exactly what a WP plugin allows you to do!

WP Plugins – Benefits & Advantages

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

In fact, loads of plugins are freely available for users.

Plugins that you purchase are referred to as “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of hiring a professional web developer to add similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. ”paid”) plugins cost very little.

Also, since WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, any person can create, rewrite and customize any part of the code. This has allowed many third-party web development companies to create more tools that add new functionality to WordPress than you can probably imagine.

• Plugins let you start off with a basic site and then add new features and enhancements to your site only as necessary.
• Plugins allow you to add almost unlimited features to your web presence easily and inexpensively.
• WP plugins give your web site virtually endless expansion capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow ”non-techies” to own a site that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your website with new enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins offer more extensive options and could require some configuration.

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

Like WordPress themes, tens of thousands of great WP plugins are made available for WordPress users … often at no cost!

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

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

WordPress plugin categories cover:

• Site Administration
• Content Management
• Increasing Web Traffic
• User Interactivity
• Social Media
• Managing Media Files – Videocasts, Graphics, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales And Marketing Automation
• Increasing Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting Applications
• Optimizing Your WordPress Web Site

You can enhance a WordPress site with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Display ad banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User feedback forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to German)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your blog
• Set up appointments and appointment reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect users from specific pages to other areas on your site or other sites
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Exclude pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your posts and pages
• Migrate information from different CMS platforms
• Perform bulk data replacements
• Block SPAM
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Inserting HTML and code elements into your posts and pages
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add business location maps
• Publish your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and many others
• Display countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As it’s clear to see, WP plugins give you virtually endless possibilities. If you are currently planning to build a website or blog for your business, or your existing web site was not built with WordPress, then consider getting one built on your domain, or you could be missing out on some serious features.

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

For example, if you need content protection, you can use plugins to make an area of your post or page inaccessible, or create a full paid membership site with customized login details for all users …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to improve your web presence in so many different ways. From adding functionality that improve your business, your site’s user experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

To extending your business visibility across a number of social media and search engines …

You can also add complex functionality to your site using relatively inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can install plugins that integrate and automate features on your pages such as displaying customer testimonials and event bookings …

And also run a custom bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying web developers to create the same applications for you …

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

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• 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 are then shared throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with increased exposure).
• Share your posts with other online visitors on social networks.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with other customers via forums or even set up a private online social network on your own site.
• Engage with your team through live video chats
• Dial your business directly from their devices when browsing your pages
• Get support via a customer support helpdesk
• And so much more …

You can even integrate complex enterprise-level applications within a WordPress “front end”. This allows you to manage the content that your visitors see on your site, while your 3rd-party application handles the technological aspects …

Useful Information About Plugins

• There are loads of WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will begin to affect your website’s resources and page loading times. It also means more maintenance issues for you as a result of possible errors.
• Install only the plugins you really need to use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use resources.
• Many free plugins often come with very little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering premium plugins, ensure that you check some reviews online and see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we publish on this site for more useful information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two or more years), then think carefully before using it on your website or blog. WordPress is updated frequently and older plugins that have not been updated can create errors.
• Always maintain your plugins upgraded to their latest software version. Outdated plugins not only can cause problems, they could also contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an important part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most powerful, flexible and scalable content management system available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new functionality to their web presence without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing regarding plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you need for your website, you can guarantee that a WP plugin probably exists that will do exactly what you need, and that it will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a premium plugin, that it will be fairly inexpensive.

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

And, if by any chance this WordPress plugin is not available, then one can certainly be created for you at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of WP plugins – what plugins are and how they can enhance the functionality of your WP web site. See our related posts to learn about more popular WordPress plugins that we recommend using.

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