Tag: What Are Plugins

One of the most unique advantages of building a website using WordPress is that you can quickly enhance your WP website’s functionality using plugins.

About Plugins

No doubt, you most likely own a cell phone. What happens when you want access to something new on your phone like a new game or a new business tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a software application that is very simple and easy to install and adds new functionality to your mobile device.

(Just as you will find social sharing apps …)

A plugin is very much like an app. You simply install and activate a software application that adds new functionality to your website …

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

Generally, expanding the functionality of your web site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, things can get quite expensive, especially if website developers need to add new code or edit code or develop scripts that integrate with your current set up.

This is also applicable when developing a new website. Companies sometimes spend money for features or options they may never need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we suggest a cost-effective approach when developing a digital presence presence and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a web presence up and running quickly, then …

2) As the need for new features arises, install new applications with only a couple of clicks of the mouse directly from within your WP administration section, giving your site a whole new range of useful capabilities, and also …

3) Cost not a single cent extra to download and install on your website?

Well, that’s just what a plugin lets you do!

Benefits & Advantages Of WP Plugins

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

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

Plugins that you buy are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the price of paying for professional web development services to get similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. ”paid”) plugins are priced quite low.

Also, since WordPress makes its code available to everyone, any web developer can create, edit and customize any portion of the WP code. This has enabled thousands of third-party software developers to create more new plugins that expand the WordPress engine than you can possibly imagine.

• Plugins let you start simply with a basic yet professional site and then add new features and enhancements to your site if necessary.
• WP plugins let you add almost unlimited features to any online business presence quickly and quite cheaply.
• WP plugins give you virtually unlimited expanding capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow business owners to own a site that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your web site instant new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more extensive options and may require some initial configuration.

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

Like many WordPress themes, thousands of WP plugins are currently available for WordPress users … often at no cost!

You can access thousands of WP plugins from the Free WP Plugin Repository …

As previously mentioned, you can find plugins that can do just about everything you need your web site to do.

There are plugins for:

• Website Management
• Content Management
• Online Traffic Generation
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Sharing
• Media Utilities Automation
• Increasing Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting Applications
• Securing Your

You can enhance your website with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Managing advertising banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce stores with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to Portuguese)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Faster page loading
• Managing events & bookings
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your blog
• Set client appointments and reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect users from old pages to other areas on your site or other sites
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect page content
• Migrate information from different publishing applications
• Search and replace data
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Inserting scripts and script elements into your pages
• Add tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add location maps
• Publicize your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and others
• Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you practically endless business scalability. If you plan to build a web site, or your existing web site wasn’t built with WordPress, then consider getting a WP site or blog in the future, or you will be missing out on some serious features.

In case you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using WP plugins, let’s take a look at how you can benefit by simply adding a plugin to your website.

For example, if you want to protect your content, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full paid membership site with customized login details for users …

As mentioned previously, you can use free plugins to improve your web site in lots of ways. From installing new features that improve your business, your web users’ experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

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

You can also add sophisticated features to your website using inexpensive paid WP plugins. For example, you can download plugins that automate functions on your website like user feedback and event registrations management …

And even run a custom bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying software developers to create these applications for you …

You can also take advantage of native WordPress commenting features and plugins that can increase visitor engagement …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Share your posts with other web visitors on social media.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with other members through forums or even set up an online community on your own site.
• Engage with members of your team via live video chats
• Dial your business directly from their devices while visiting your site
• Get support via a dedicated client helpdesk
• And so much more …

Finally you, can even integrate sophisticated enterprise solutions using a WP “front end”. This lets you control your business sales and marketing, while your 3rd-party application handles the technical aspects …

WordPress Plugins – Useful Things You Should Know

• There are lots of plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can affect your website’s resources and page loading times. It also means more maintenance issues for you as a consequence of possible conflicts and errors.
• Only keep those plugins you really need. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these utilize resources.
• Many free plugins often come with very little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing premium plugins, ensure that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we publish here for additional expert 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 website. The WordPress software changes often and older plugins can create conflicts.
• Ensure to always maintain your plugins upgraded to their most recent version. Older plugins not only can cause errors and conflicts, they may also contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most powerful, flexible and scalable CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand without having to spend thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing on the topic of WP plugins:

Whatever feature you want for your web presence, you can be sure that a someone has probably already developed one that will do what you need, and that it can either be accessed 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 such a WordPress plugin has not been created yet, then a custom plugin that does exactly what you want it to do can probably be created for your business at a reasonable cost.

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

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