Tag: What Are Plugins

One of the most unique advantages of choosing WordPress is that you can quickly and easily enhance your WordPress web site’s functionality using applications called plugins.

What Are Plugins?

Like most people, you most likely have a device like a smart phone. What happens when you want to access something new on your device like a new game or a new business tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is very easy to install and immediately adds new features to any mobile device.

(Just as you will find social sharing apps …)

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

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

Normally, adding new features to a site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new feature or enhancement is, the cost can be fairly significant, particularly if website developers have to create new code or modify programs or install programs to integrate into your existing set up.

This also applies when developing a web site. Business owners will often invest money in features they probably will never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we suggest a modular strategy when growing a 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 professional-looking website up and running fast, then …

2) As the need for new capabilities arises, install new software modules with just a couple of clicks of the mouse directly from your dashboard panel, to give your website an entirely new range of possibilities, and also …

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

Well, that’s exactly what WP plugins let you do!

Benefits & Advantages Of Plugins

We started this article by comparing WordPress plugins with smartphone apps. Just like many apps are free to download and some apps cost a little money, so do WordPress plugins.

In fact, many wonderful plugins are available at no cost to WP users.

Plugins that you purchase are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the cost of a Premium plugin to the cost of paying for web development services to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are priced quite low.

Also, because WordPress makes its code available to everyone, anyone can create, modify and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has enabled thousands of professional software development companies to build more tools that work with the WordPress platform than you can probably imagine.

• WordPress plugins allow you to get started with a simple site and then add new features and enhancements to your site if required.
• WP plugins let you add almost unlimited features to any site quickly, easily and inexpensively.
• WordPress plugins give you virtually endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow business owners to own a web presence that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your web site instant new capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins are a little more complex and require some configuration.

WP Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Often) Completely FREE!

Just like WP themes, tens of thousands of WordPress plugins are made available for WordPress users … for FREE!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find WP plugins that will do just about everything you need a web site to do.

WP plugin categories cover:

• Website Management
• Content Syndication
• Driving Web Traffic
• User Engagement
• Social Monitoring
• Adding Media – Videos, Graphics, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Reporting Applications
• Optimizing Your

You can add features to a website with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Surveys
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from managing single ordering with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User feedback forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to Italian)
• 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
• Business directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your blog
• Set client appointments and appointment reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
• Redirect users from certain pages to other areas on your site or other sites
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Hide certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide post content sections
• Import data from non-WP applications
• Perform bulk content replacements
• Block SPAM
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Insert scripts and code elements into your content
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search results
• Add business location maps
• Post your content automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you practically limitless possibilities. If you plan to build a web site, or your existing web site wasn’t built with WordPress, then consider getting one added to your domain, or you could be missing out on some serious features.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WordPress plugins are, let’s take a look at some practical uses of installing a plugin on your site.

For example, if you want content protection, you can install plugins to make a section of a post or page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a professional membership site with personal login details for all users …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to enhance your site in lots of ways. From installing functionality that improve your business, your visitors’ experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

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

You can also add advanced features to your site using relatively inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that automate functionality on your website such as displaying customer testimonials and booking events …

And also run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring software developers to code the same functionality for you …

You can also take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that will let you engage more with your visitors, customers and registered site members …

For example, your visitors can:

• Post comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Bookmark your content on social networks.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with other members using online forums or even set up a private online community on your site.
• Engage with your support team via live video chats
• Dial your business from their laptops when visiting your pages
• Open a support ticket
• And so much more …

You can also integrate complex enterprise solutions using a WordPress “front end”. This allows you to manage the content that your visitors will see on your website, while your 3rd-party application handles the technological aspects …

Plugins – Additional Things To Know

• There are loads of useful plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with too many plugins, as this will affect your website’s performance and site loading times. It can also create more maintenance work for you as a result of potential conflicts and errors.
• Only keep the plugins you really use. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these also use resources.
• Many free plugins often receive very little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering 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, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we publish on this site for more useful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think carefully before installing it on your website. The WordPress core application changes frequently and older plugins that have not been updated can cause issues.
• Always keep your plugins up-to-date. Outdated plugins not only can create issues, they could also contain security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, WP plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most popular content management system in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add new features to their web presence without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web development.

One last thing on the subject of WordPress plugins:

Whatever feature you want for your web presence, you can guarantee that a plugin currently exists that will do exactly what you want, and that this plugin will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the cost to purchase it will be reasonable.

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

And, if by any chance such a WP plugin has not been created yet, then a custom plugin that does just what you need it to do can probably be developed for you for a reasonable price.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of WP plugins – what they are and how they can help enhance the functionality of your website. See our related posts to learn about more useful plugins that we recommend using.

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