Tag: What Are Plugins

One of the most useful features of WordPress is the ability to easily enhance your WordPress web site’s functionality using inexpensive called ’plugins’.

Understanding Plugins

No doubt, you probably have a cell phone. What do you do when you would like to access something new on your device like a new application, game or business productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little software application that is easy to install and adds new functionality to a smart phone.

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

A WP plugin is like an app. You install and activate a software application that provides new functionality to your WordPress web site …

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

Almost always, if you need to add new features to an existing site, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the feature or enhancement is, the cost can be fairly significant, particularly if website developers need to create new code or modify code or install programs that integrate into your current site.

This is also applicable to starting a website or business blog. Business owners often spend money upfront on features they probably will never need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we suggest considering a cost-effective strategy to setting up your presence online presence and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a basic, professional-looking web presence up and running fast, then …

2) As the need for new capabilities arises, you can install new applications with a few clicks of the mouse that integrate with your current web site, giving your website or blog an entirely new range of possibilities, and …

3) Cost not one cent more to add to your site?

Well, that’s just what WP plugins allow you to do!

Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

Earlier, we compared 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 WP plugins.

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

Plugins that cost money are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of paying for professional web development services to get similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins cost very little.

Also, because WordPress makes its code available to everyone, any web developer can create, modify and customize any part of the WP code. This has allowed many professional web development companies to enhance the core WordPress software application.

• Plugins allow you to start simply with a basic yet professional online business presence and then expand only when necessary.
• Plugins allow you to add almost endless functionality to your web presence quickly, easily and inexpensively.
• WordPress plugins give you practically unlimited expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow ”non-techies” to have a website that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins normally 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 a little more complex and may need some initial configuration.

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

Like WP themes, thousands of great plugins are currently available to WordPress users … for FREE!

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find plugins that can do just about anything you could think of.

Plugin categories cover:

• Blog Administration
• Content Management
• Traffic
• User Engagement
• Social Connectivity
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Monitoring & Reporting Applications
• WP SEO

For example, you can expand a business online presence with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonial forms
• Instant language translation (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 menus
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage management
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell spots on your website
• Set up appointments and appointment reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
• Redirect website links
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Exclude certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide page content
• Import data from non-WordPress applications
• Perform bulk content edits
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Insert HTML and code elements into your site’s header and footer
• Add tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map of your business location
• Distribute your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and others
• Display countdown timers (for special offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you practically endless possibilities. If you are currently planning to build a website for your business, or your existing site isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider getting one added to your domain, or you will be missing out on some serious features.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WordPress plugins are, let me show you some practical uses of adding an inexpensive plugin to your website.

For example, if you want content protection, you can install plugins to make an area of your page or post inaccessible, or create a full membership site with separate login details for all users …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to improve your site in so many ways. From adding features that improve your business, your web users’ experience and your ability to review visitor metrics …

To extending your business reach across social media and search engines …

You can also add complex functionality to your website using inexpensive paid WP plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that integrate and automate tasks on your website such as user feedback and event registrations management …

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 build similar functionality for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that will let you engage in various ways with web visitors, customers and registered site users …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Share your content with other online users on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with your team through online forums or even set up a private social network on your own site.
• Engage with members of your team using live web conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Dial your business from their cellphones while visiting your website
• Get help and support via a dedicated customer support helpdesk
• And so much more …

Finally you, can also integrate complex third-party solutions with a WP “front end”. This allows you to manage the content that your visitors see on your web site, while the 3rd-party application handles the technical side of things …

WordPress Plugins – Some Useful Things You Should Know

• There are many plugins available. Be careful of overloading your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will inevitably affect your site’s resources and site loading speed. It can also create more maintenance issues for you resulting from potential conflicts and errors.
• Install only those plugins that you really plan to use. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these use server resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive little to no support from the plugin author. When considering premium plugins, make sure you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we provide here for more useful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think twice before installing it on your site. WordPress is updated on a regular basis and outdated WP plugins can cause problems.
• Make sure that you always maintain all plugins up-to-date. Outdated plugins not only can create conflicts, they could also contain vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most downloaded CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add instant functionality to their web presence without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing on the topic of WP plugins:

Whatever functionality you want for your web site, you can be sure that a WP plugin probably exists that will do what you want it to do, and that it can either be accessed at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the cost will be minimal.

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

And, if by chance such a WordPress plugin is not available, then it can probably be created for your business for a reasonable price.

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

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