WordPress Plugins Explained

This tutorial explains what WordPress plugins are, how plugins work and how plugins help WordPress users extend their website’s functionality. 

Using WP Plugins To Enhance Your Site's FeaturesOne of the main benefits of using WordPress is that you can quickly increase your WP website or blog’s functionality using applications called plugins.

Understanding WP Plugins

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

You download and install an app!

An app is a software that is simple and easy to install and instantly adds new features to a smart device.

A Beginner's Guide To Understanding WP Plugins

(Just as you can find social sharing apps …)

A plugin is very similar to an app. You simply download and install a little piece of software that provides new functionality to your site …

A Non-Technical Guide To WordPress Plugins

(… there are also social sharing plugins for WP!)

Almost always, if you need to expand the functionality of a web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the new features or enhancements, this cost can be quite significant, particularly if website developers need to add new code or edit programs or develop programs that integrate into your current site.

This is also applicable when starting a new website or business blog. Business owners sometimes fork out money in advance on extra features and options they may probably never need.

For this reason, we suggest considering a cost-effective approach when growing a online presence presence and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine if you could:

1) Start simply and with minimal expense involved. Get a professional-looking web site up and running fast, then …

2) As you need more features or functionality, simply install new applications with just a couple of clicks of the mouse directly from your administration section, giving your website a completely new range of useful functionality, and also …

3) Cost not one dollar more to add to your web site?

Well, that’s precisely what WordPress plugins let you do!

Benefits And Advantages Of Plugins

I began this post by comparing plugins with apps. In the same way that some apps are free to download and some apps cost a little bit of money, the same is true with plugins.

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

WP plugins that you have to pay for are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when you compare these to the price of investing in professional web development services to add the same functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are typically quite inexpensive.

Also, because WordPress makes its code publicly available, any person can create, modify and customize any portion of the code. This has enabled thousands of professional web development companies to build more applications that “plug into” WordPress than you can possibly imagine.

  • WordPress plugins allow you to get started simply with just a basic online business presence and expand only as required.
  • Plugins let you add almost endless features to any web site quickly and quite cheaply.
  • WordPress plugins give your site virtually endless expanding capabilities.
  • Plugins allow non-technical users to have a site that they can self-manage.
  • Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your site with immediate capabilities and enhancements.
  • Some plugins provide more extensive features and could require some configuring.

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

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

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

A Guide To WP Plugins

As previously mentioned, you can find WordPress plugins that will do almost everything you can think of.

Plugin categories cover:

  • Blog Management
  • Content Syndication
  • Web Traffic Generation
  • User Interactivity
  • Social Engagement
  • Adding Media – Videos, Graphics & Images, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
  • e-Biz And Online Sales Automation
  • Increasing Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
  • Data Reporting Applications
  • WordPress SEO

For example, you can add features to your website with plugins like:

  • Contact forms
  • Quizzes and polls
  • User Surveys
  • Managing advertising banners
  • E-commerce (from setting up single ordering with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupon codes, etc …)
  • Social media integration
  • Private Membership sites
  • Newsletter opt-in forms
  • Sales workflow
  • Mobile integration
  • Improving your site’s SEO
  • Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
  • Customer testimonials
  • Automatic language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your site’s content from English to French)
  • Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
  • Custom navigation menus
  • Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
  • Media management
  • Faster page loading
  • Managing events
  • Niche directories
  • Automatically sell and manage spots on your site
  • Set appointments and appointment reminders
  • Set up reservations and bookings
  • Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
  • Redirect affiliate links
  • Monitor social signals
  • Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
  • Add a site map
  • Hide pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
  • Protect content on your pages and posts
  • Migrate data from non-WP applications
  • Perform bulk data replacements
  • Prevent SPAM commenting
  • Customize visitor discussions (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
  • Inserting code and code elements into your blog’s header and footer
  • Add tables
  • Display animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
  • Add and manage QR codes
  • Improve your local search listings on Google
  • Add a map
  • Post your content automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and others
  • Display countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
  • Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
  • And hundreds of other features!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you endless business flexibility. If you plan to build a web site for your business, or your existing website was not built with WordPress, then consider getting a WordPress site or blog built on your domain, or you will be missing out on some serious features.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let me show you how you can benefit by adding a plugin to your site.

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

A Guide To Understanding WP Plugins

As mentioned previously, you can use free plugins to improve your web presence in lots of ways. From adding features that will enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

A Newbie's Guide To WordPress Plugins

To extending your site’s reach across a number of social networks and search engines …

A Guide To WP Plugins

You can also add advanced features to your site using inexpensive premium WP plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that integrate and automate tasks on your website like displaying customer testimonials and booking events …

A Guide To Understanding WP Plugins

And even run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring software developers to code similar applications for you …

A Beginner's Guide To Understanding WP Plugins

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that will let you engage better with visitors, customers and registered site users …

A Basic Guide To Understanding WordPress Plugins

For example, your visitors can easily:

  • Post comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
  • Bookmark your posts on bookmarking sites.
  • Contact you using contact forms
  • Engage in online discussions with your team members through forums or even set up a private online social network on your domain.
  • Engage with your support team via live chats
  • Call your business from their cellphones while visiting your pages
  • Get support via a dedicated client help desk
  • And so much more …

A Guide To WP Plugins

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

A Newbie's Guide To Understanding WordPress Plugins

Some Useful Information About WordPress Plugins

  • There are lots of plugins available. Be careful of overloading your site with too many plugins, as this will start to affect your site’s performance and page loading speed. It also creates more maintenance work for you resulting from potential conflicts.
  • Install only the plugins you really use. Delete any plugins from your site, as these also consume server resources.
  • Many free plugins often come with very little to no support from the plugin author. When considering premium plugins, we recommend that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check our plugin reviews for additional information.
  • If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two or more years), then think carefully before using it. The WordPress software changes regularly and older plugins can cause issues.
  • Make sure that you always update your plugins to the latest software version. Outdated plugins not only can cause problems, they could also contain vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

A Guide To Understanding WP Plugins

As you can see, WP plugins are an important feature of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most downloaded CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add instant features to their website without spending thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing regarding plugins:

If there is any feature you need for your web presence, you can be sure that a someone has probably already authored one that will do exactly what you want, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the cost to purchase it will be minimal.

Whatever you need done, there's a WordPress plugin for that!

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

And, if by any chance such a WordPress plugin does not exist, then it can probably be written for you at a reasonable cost.

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

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"Learning WordPress has been a huge stumbling block for me. I've been looking for something that covers absolutely everything but doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Thank you so much ... you have just provided me with what I have been looking for! Truly appreciated!" - Tanya

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