Tag: What Are Plugins

One of the main benefits of WordPress is that you can quickly and easily increase your WP website’s functionality using inexpensive (and often completely free) applications called plugins.

About Plugins

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

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a software that is simple and easy to install and immediately integrates new features into a mobile phone.

(Just as there are social sharing apps for smart devices …)

A plugin is like an app. You simply install a little software application that adds new functionality to your WordPress site …

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

Almost always, adding a new feature to an already-built site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new feature or enhancement is, this could become fairly expensive, particularly if web developers have to add new code or modify templates or install programs that integrate with your current set up.

This is also applicable when developing a website or business blog. Businesses tend to pay for features they probably will never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we suggest a modular approach to setting up your website and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply and with minimal cost involved. Get a website up and running quickly, then …

2) As more features become necessary, simply install new software modules with a couple of clicks of the mouse that integrate with your existing website, giving your site a whole new and expanded range of features and functionality, and …

3) Cost not one cent extra to download and install on your site?

Well, this is precisely what plugins allow you to do!

Benefits Of WordPress Plugins

Earlier, we compared WordPress plugins with apps. In a similar way that many apps are free to download and some may cost a little bit of money, so do WordPress plugins.

In fact, thousands of plugins can be downloaded to your website for free.

Plugins that you purchase are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare these to the price of investing in web development services to get the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are typically quite inexpensive.

Also, since WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, any person can create, edit and customize any part of the code. This has enabled many third-party software development companies to enhance and contribute to the core WP software application.

• Plugins let you start off with a basic yet professional website and then expand as necessary.
• Plugins let you add practically unlimited features to any website easily, quickly and very cheaply.
• Plugins give your digital business presence virtually endless expansion capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow anyone to have a website that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your web site immediate capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins are a little more advanced and may need some configuration.

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

Just like themes, loads of great plugins are currently available for WP users … often at $0 cost!

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find WP plugins that can do just about everything you want done.

There are WordPress plugins for:

• Site Management
• Content Distribution
• Web Traffic Generation
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Connectivity
• Adding Media – Video, Graphics, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting Applications
• Optimizing Your WordPress Site

For example, you can expand your WP site with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Surveys
• Rotating advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonial forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your website from English to French)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your blog
• Set client appointments and reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social conversations
• 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
• Import information from non-WordPress applications
• Perform bulk content replacements
• Block SPAM
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. display Facebook comments)
• Insert HTML and script elements into your pages
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search listings
• Add business location maps
• Publish your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and many others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you practically endless possibilities. If you plan to build a website or blog, or your existing web site isn’t built with WordPress, then consider using WordPress in the future.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let’s take a look at how you can benefit by installing an inexpensive plugin on your website.

For example, if you need to publish private content, you can use plugins to make a section of your post or page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a complete paid membership site with personal login details for users …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to improve your site in so many different ways. From installing features that improve your business, your web users’ experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

To increasing your site’s reach and visibility across many social media and search engines …

You can also add advanced features to your site using relatively inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that integrate and automate processes on your site like user feedback and event registrations management …

And also run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying software developers to create these functionality for you …

You can also take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that can make your site even more interactive …

For example, your visitors can:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with your team using forums or even set up a private community on your site.
• Engage with members of your team through live chats
• Call your business from their smart phones while visiting your pages
• Open support tickets
• And so much more …

Finally you, can also integrate complex “back end” solutions within a WordPress “front end”. This allows you to control the content that your visitors see on your site, while the third-party application handles the technical side of things …

Additional Tips About WordPress Plugins

• There are so many plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your site with too many plugins, as this can begin to affect your site’s resources and site loading speed. It can also mean more maintenance work for you resulting from potential errors.
• Only keep the plugins you really plan to use. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these use resources.
• Many free plugins often receive little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering paid plugins, ensure that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we provide on this site for more 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 website or blog. WordPress updates regularly and older plugins that have not been updated can cause conflicts.
• Make sure that you always keep your plugins updated to the most recent version. Outdated plugin not only can create conflicts, they may also contain vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most popular content management system available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new functionality to their website without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web development costs.

One last thing regarding WordPress plugins:

Whatever feature you want for your web site, you can be sure that a plugin already exists that will do what you want, and that it will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the cost will be very affordable.

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

And, if by chance this WP plugin is not available, then a custom plugin that does precisely what you need it to do can most certainly be created for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of WP plugins – what plugins are and how they can help to improve your website. See our published posts to learn more about using WP plugins.

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