Tag: What Are Plugins

One of the main features of the WordPress website publishing platform is the ability to quickly expand your WP website or blog’s functionality using plugins.

About WP Plugins

No doubt, you most likely use a smart phone. What happens when you want to access something new on your phone like a new application, software or tool?

You download and install an app!

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

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

A plugin is like an app. You download and install a software that adds new functionality to your WP website or blog …

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

Almost always, adding new features to your website involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the new feature or enhancement, things can become quite expensive, particularly if web developers need to create new code or edit templates or install scripts that integrate with your current set up.

This is also applicable when creating a web site. Businesses often fork out money up-front for components they probably will never need.

To reduce expenses, we suggest using a cost-effective strategy to developing a website and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply with minimal expense involved. Get your business web site up and running quickly, then …

2) As the need arises, add new software modules with a couple of clicks of the mouse that integrate seamlessly with your existing website, giving your web site an entirely new and expanded range of possibilities, and also …

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

Well, this is just what WordPress plugins allow you to do!

Benefits & Advantages Of WordPress Plugins

Earlier, we compared plugins with smartphone apps. In the same way that some apps are free to download and some cost a little money, so do plugins.

In fact, many plugins can be installed and activated on your websites.

Plugins that cost money are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the price of purchasing a Premium WP plugin to the price of investing in professional web development services to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are generally very inexpensive.

Also, because WordPress makes its code publicly available, any web developer can create, modify and customize any portion of the code. This has enabled many third-party software development professionals to enhance the WordPresssoftware.

• WordPress plugins let you get started with only a simple online business presence and expand only as necessary.
• Plugins let you add practically endless functionality to your web site quickly, easily and very inexpensively.
• WP plugins give your online presence virtually endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow business owners to own a website that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your website or blog immediate enhancements and features.
• Some plugins offer more advanced options and require some initial configuring.

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

Just like themes, loads of plugins are available to WP users … for FREE!

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

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

There are WP plugins for:

• Website Management
• Content Distribution
• Online Traffic Generation
• User Engagement
• Social Media
• Adding Media Files – Videos, Graphics & Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Analysis Tools
• Optimizing Your

You can enhance a business online presence with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• User Surveys
• Managing banners
• E-commerce (from managing single ordering with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User feedback forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site from English to French)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage management
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your site
• Set up appointments and appointment reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Exclude pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide post content
• Migrate content from non-WP platforms
• Perform bulk content replacements
• Block SPAM
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Inserting HTML and code elements into your blog’s header or footer
• Add formatted tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add business location maps
• Post your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, WordPress plugins give you virtually endless possibilities. If you plan to build a website, or your existing website isn’t built with WordPress, then consider getting one added to your domain, or you will be missing out on some serious functionality.

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 want to protect your content, you can install plugins to make a section of your post or page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full paid membership site with personal login details for all users …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to enhance your business site in so many different ways. From installing features that will enhance your business, your website visitors’ experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

To extending your site’s visibility across multiple social sites and search engines …

You can also add complex features to your site using inexpensive paid WP plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that automate features on your pages like managing customer testimonials and event bookings …

And also set up a custom bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying programmers to create these applications for you …

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

For example, your web visitors can:

• Leave comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Bookmark your content on various social sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with your team members using forums or even set up a private community on your own domain.
• Engage with your support staff using live webcam conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Call your business directly from their laptops when browsing your site
• Open a support ticket
• And so much more …

You can also integrate sophisticated enterprise-level solutions with a WordPress “front end”. This lets you manage your business sales and marketing, while the 3rd-party application handles the technological side of things …

Some Useful Things To Know About Plugins

• There are lots of plugins to choose from. 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 can also create more maintenance work for you as a result of potential conflicts and errors.
• Only keep those plugins you really use. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these utilize additional server resources.
• Many free plugins often come with very little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing premium WordPress 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 features, etc. Be sure to check our WordPress plugin reviews for more information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think twice before using it on your website. The WordPress core software is updated frequently and older plugins that have not been updated can cause errors.
• Make sure to always upgrade your plugins to the most recent version. Older plugin not only can cause issues, they may also contain security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an important part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most powerful, flexible and scalable CMS in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new functionality to their website without having to spend thousands of dollars on web developers.

One last thing about WordPress plugins:

Whatever functionality you need for your web site, you can guarantee that a plugin probably exists that will do exactly what you need, and that it can either be accessed at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be reasonably affordable.

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

And, if by chance this plugin has not been created yet, then one can certainly be developed for your business for a very reasonable price.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of WP plugins – what they are and how they can to improve your blog. See our published posts to learn about more popular WP plugins that we recommend using.

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