Tag: What Are Plugins

One of the most powerful benefits of building an online presence with the WordPress platform is that you can quickly and easily expand your WordPress website or blog’s functionality using inexpensive called plugins.

About WP Plugins

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

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a piece of software that is really easy to install and integrates new functionality into any smart phone.

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

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

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

Almost always, if you want to add new features to your website, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the new features or enhancements, this can get quite expensive, especially if web developers need to create new code or modify programs or develop scripts that integrate with your current set up.

This also applies when setting up a new web site. Organizations sometimes spend up-front on additional components they probably will never need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we recommend using a cost-effective strategy when setting up a website and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and with minimal expense involved. Get a web presence up and running quickly, then …

2) As you need more features, add new software modules with just a few clicks of the mouse directly from within your WordPress administration area, and give your site an entirely new and expanded range of practical functionality, and also …

3) Cost not a single cent more to add to your web site?

Well, this is exactly what a WordPress plugin enables you to do!

Benefits Of Plugins

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

In fact, thousands of wonderful plugins are freely available for users.

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

Also, because WordPress makes its code publicly available, any person can create, edit and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has allowed thousands of professional software developers to build more new tools that work seamlessly with WordPress than you can imagine.

• WordPress plugins let you start off simply with only a basic online business presence and then expand only when necessary.
• Plugins allow you to add practically endless functionality to any online business presence easily and cheaply.
• Plugins give your online presence almost endless expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical users to have a website that they can manage.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your website or blog with immediate capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more advanced options and may need some initial configuring.

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

Just like themes, loads of great WordPress plugins are currently available for WordPress users … for FREE!

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

As previously mentioned, you can find WordPress plugins that can do almost anything you need done.

Plugin categories cover:

• Blog Management
• Content Syndication
• Increasing Web Visitors
• User Engagement
• Social Engagement
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Analysis
• Web Site Security

You can enhance a website with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• User Surveys
• Managing ad banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your website from English to German)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell spots on your site
• Set appointments and reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and send you reports
• Redirect affiliate pages
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude certain from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide post content sections
• Migrate information from non-WP applications
• Search and replace data
• Fight SPAM
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Inserting scripts and code elements into your posts, pages and sidebar menus
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add business location maps
• Publicize your posts automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you endless business flexibility. If you are currently planning to build a website or blog, or your existing web site wasn’t built with WordPress, then consider getting a WordPress site or blog in the future, or you could be missing out on some serious features.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let me show you how you can benefit instantly by installing an inexpensive plugin on your website.

For example, if you want to publish content which is only accessible to some users, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a post or page inaccessible, or create a complete membership site with separate login details for every user …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to improve your website in so many ways. From installing functionality that can improve your business, your visitors’ experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

To increasing your business visibility across many social sites and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your website using inexpensive paid WordPress plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that integrate and automate tasks on your pages like managing customer testimonials and event registration details …

And even set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying web developers to design similar applications for you …

You can also take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that will increase your site’s interactivity …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site increased exposure).
• Share your content with other web visitors on various social sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online with other users through online forums or even set up an online social network on your site.
• Engage with your support team via live webcam conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Dial your business directly from their laptops when visiting your pages
• Open a support ticket
• And so much more …

You can also integrate sophisticated enterprise solutions within a WP “front end”. This lets you manage your business marketing, while your 3rd-party application handles the technical functions …

Some Useful Things To Know About Plugins

• There are so many terrific plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your site with too many plugins, as this will affect your site’s performance and site loading times. It can also create more maintenance issues for you resulting from possible 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 also utilize server resources.
• Many free plugins normally receive little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing paid plugins, make sure 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 provide here for additional 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. The WordPress platform changes often and older WordPress plugins can cause errors.
• Make sure to always keep your plugins updated. Outdated plugins not only can cause issues, they may also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

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

One last thing regarding plugins:

If there is any feature or functionality you want for your web presence, you can be sure that a plugin probably exists that will do what you need it to do, and that this plugin will either be available 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 WP plugin is not available, then a custom plugin that does just what you would like it to do can most certainly be developed for you at a reasonable cost.

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

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