Tag: What Are Plugins

One of the most useful benefits of the WordPress web content publishing platform is that you can easily expand your WordPress web site’s functionality using inexpensive (and often free) applications called plugins.

What Are WP Plugins?

Like most of us, you probably use a smart phone. What do you do when you would like to access something new on your phone like a new software or business tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little software that is easy to install and immediately adds new features to your smart device.

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

A plugin is very similar to an app. You simply install and activate an application that adds new functionality to your web site …

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

Typically, if you plan to expand the functionality of an existing website, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancements, this can get quite expensive, particularly if it involves website development.

This is also applicable when setting up a new web site. Business owners often invest money in advance in added features they may simply not need.

For this reason, we recommend a modular approach when growing a website and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

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

2) As the need becomes evident, you can add new applications with only a couple of mouse clicks directly from within your WP administration area, and give your website or blog a whole new range of possibilities, and also …

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

Well, that’s just what WordPress plugins let you do!

Benefits Of WP Plugins

We began this post by comparing plugins with apps. Just like many apps are free to download and some apps may cost a little bit of money, the same is true for plugins.

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

WordPress plugins that you purchase are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare these to the price of paying for web development services to get similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are typically very inexpensive.

Also, as WordPress makes its code publicly available, anybody can create, modify and customize any part of the code. This has allowed thousands of professional web development professionals to enhance the core WP software application.

• Plugins allow you to start off simply with a simple yet professional site and then add new features and enhancements to your site only when necessary.
• WP plugins allow you to add practically endless functionality to any online business presence quickly, easily and really cheaply.
• Plugins give you practically endless expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow business owners to own a site that they can manage.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your web site with new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins can be slightly more advanced and could require some initial configuring.

Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Often) 100% FREE!

Like many themes, loads of great plugins are available to WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find plugins that can do just about everything you can possibly need a website to do.

There are WP plugins for:

• Blog Administration
• Content Distribution
• Traffic
• User Interactivity
• Social Engagement
• Media Management Automation
• Increasing Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Analysis
• Securing Your

You can enhance a WordPress site with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Managing ad banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce with online 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 Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Automatic language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your website 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.
• Cloud storage management
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell spots on your site
• Set client appointments and reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Exclude specific from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect post content sections
• Migrate content from non-WP applications
• Perform bulk content replacements
• Block SPAM commenting
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Inserting HTML and code elements into your content
• Add 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
• Publicize your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and many others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you virtually limitless possibilities. If you are currently planning to build a web site, or your existing site was not built using WordPress, then consider getting a WP site or blog in the future, or you could be missing out on some serious features.

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

For example, if you need to publish private content, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on your post inaccessible, or create a complete paid membership site with customized login details for all users …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to improve your business site in so many different ways. From installing new features that enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your ability to analyze website data …

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

You can also add sophisticated features to your site using inexpensive premium WP plugins. For example, you can install plugins that integrate and automate features on your site such as customer testimonial and event registration management …

And even run a custom bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to build similar applications for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of native WordPress commenting features and plugins that can enhance visitor engagement …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with increased exposure).
• Share your posts with other web users on social networking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with other customers via forums or even set up an online community on your domain.
• Engage with your team via live webcam conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Dial your business directly from their laptops when browsing your site
• Open a support ticket
• And much more …

Finally you, can also integrate complex third-party applications within a WordPress “front end”. This lets you manage the content that your visitors will see on your web site, while the 3rd-party application handles the technical functions …

Useful Tips About Plugins

• There are loads of great WordPress plugins available. Be careful of overloading your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can affect your website’s performance and page loading speed. It also creates more maintenance work for you resulting from possible errors.
• Only keep the plugins that you really use. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these also use resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with very little to no support from the plugin author. When considering premium 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 our WP plugin reviews for more information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before installing it on your site. WordPress updates often and outdated plugins can create problems.
• Always maintain your plugins up-to-date. Older plugin not only can create problems, they could also have security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an important component of WordPress and contribute to making it the most preferred content management system available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand quickly without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web development costs.

One last thing about WP plugins:

Whatever feature you want for your web presence, you can be sure that a plugin already exists that will do just what you want it to do, and that this plugin can either be downloaded at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that it will be reasonably inexpensive.

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

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

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

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