Tag: What Are Plugins

One of the main features of WordPress is that you can easily increase your WP website’s functionality using inexpensive called ’plugins’.

What Are Plugins?

Like most people, you probably use a mobile phone. What do you do when you want access to something new on your device like a new game or a productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

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

(Just like you will find social sharing apps …)

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

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

Normally, adding new features to an existing website involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the new feature or enhancement, the cost can be quite significant, especially if it requires website development.

This also applies when developing a new website. Business owners sometimes invest money in advance in bells and whistles they may simply not need.

To minimize your costs, we recommend using a cost-effective approach when setting up your online presence presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine if you could:

1) Start simply and with minimal expense involved. Get a professional-looking web presence up and running quickly, then …

2) As more features are needed, just add new applications with only a couple of mouse clicks directly from your administration panel, giving your website an entirely new and expanded range of capabilities and functionality, and also …

3) Cost not a single cent more to add to your site?

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

WP Plugins – Benefits

We started this blog post by comparing plugins with smartphone apps. Just like some apps are free to download and some apps cost a little bit of money, the same applies to WordPress plugins.

In fact, thousands of plugins can be downloaded to your website at no cost.

WordPress plugins that you have to buy are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the price of a Premium plugin to the cost of paying for web development services to add the same functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. ”paid”) plugins are typically very inexpensive.

Also, because WordPress makes its code publicly available, anybody can create, edit and customize any portion of the WP code. This has enabled thousands of professional web development companies to create more tools that work with WordPress than you can possibly imagine.

• WP plugins allow you to start off with just a basic site and add new features and enhancements to your site when required.
• WP plugins let you add almost endless functionality to any online business presence quickly and quite inexpensively.
• WP plugins give your site practically unlimited expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical website owners to own a web presence that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your web site immediate enhancements and features.
• Some plugins are slightly more complex and could require some initial configuration.

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

Like many themes, tens of thousands of WP plugins are available to WP users … and many of these great plugins are 100% FREE!

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

As mentioned earlier, you can find plugins that can do almost everything you could imagine.

WordPress plugin categories cover:

• User Management
• Content Syndication
• Online Traffic Generation
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Sharing
• Adding Media Files – Videos, Images, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales And Advertising Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting
• WP Optimization

You can expand a business online presence with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Surveys
• Display banners
• E-commerce (from managing single ordering with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce stores with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonial forms
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your site’s content from English to Spanish)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage integration
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your website
• Set client appointments and appointment reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social signals
• 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. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect post content sections
• Import data from non-WordPress applications
• Search and replace data
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Insert code and code elements into your blog’s header or footer
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add business location maps
• Syndicate your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and others
• Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, WP plugins give you practically limitless possibilities. If you are planning to build a website or blog, or your existing web site wasn’t built using WordPress, then consider choosing it in the future.

In case you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let’s take a look at how you can benefit instantly by simply installing an inexpensive plugin on your web site.

For example, if you need content protection, you can install plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on your post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full paid membership site with separate login details for every user …

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

To increasing your business reach across a number of social networks and search engines …

You can also add advanced features to your website using inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that integrate and automate tasks on your pages like user testimonial and event registrations management …

And also set up a custom bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to build these functionality for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of native WordPress commenting features and plugins that can make your site even more interactive …

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Bookmark your content on social networking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with your team via forums or even set up an online community on your own site.
• Engage with your staff through live video chats
• Call your business directly from their cellphones while visiting your site
• Get help and support via a dedicated user helpdesk
• And much more …

Finally you, can also integrate complex enterprise-level applications using a WP “front end”. This lets you control the content that your visitors will see on your website, while the third-party application handles the technological side of things …

WP Plugins – Some Useful Things You Should Know

• There are loads of plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will affect your site’s resources and page loading speed. It can also create more maintenance work for you as a consequence of possible conflicts.
• Install only the plugins that you really need. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these also utilize server resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive little to no support from the plugin author. When considering paid WordPress plugins, ensure that you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of our WordPress plugin recommendations for additional information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think twice before installing it on your site. WordPress changes frequently and out-of-date plugins can create problems.
• Ensure to always maintain all plugins updated. Outdated plugins not only can create errors, they could also contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, plugins are an important element of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most popular web management platform available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add instant features to their web presence without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing on the topic of WP plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you need for your web site, you can guarantee that a WP plugin probably 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 price to buy it will be reasonable.

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

And, if by any chance this plugin does not exist, then a custom plugin that does exactly what you would like it to do can probably be written for you at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of plugins – what plugins are and how they can help expand your web site. See our published posts to learn more about usingplugins.

***

***