Tag: What Are Plugins

One of the main benefits of building a web presence with WordPress is the ability to easily increase your WordPress site’s functionality using applications called plugins.

Understanding Plugins

Like most of us, you probably have a cell phone. What happens when you want to access something new on your device like a new game or a new business tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a software application that is really easy to install and instantly integrates new features into any smart device.

(Just as there are social sharing apps …)

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

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

Typically, adding new features to an existing site involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancement, this could become fairly expensive, especially if it involves editing code.

This also applies to setting up a website. Organizations tend to pay up-front for features they probably will never need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we recommend a modular approach to growing a web site and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As you need more features and functionality, just add new applications with a few mouse clicks directly from your dashboard panel, and give your website a whole new and expanded range of practical features and capabilities, and …

3) Cost not one cent more to download and install on your website?

Well, that’s precisely what a WP plugin allows you to do!

Benefits Of Plugins

Earlier, we compared plugins with mobile apps. Just like many apps are free to download and some cost a little bit of money, so do plugins.

In fact, many wonderful plugins can be downloaded to your site for free.

WordPress plugins that you have to pay for are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the price of buying a Premium WP plugin to the price of hiring a professional web developer to get the same functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are priced quite low.

Also, as WordPress makes its code available to everyone, any person can create, edit and customize any portion of the code. This has allowed thousands of professional web developers to enhance and contribute to the WordPresssoftware.

• Plugins let you start off simply with only a basic yet professional web site and expand only as necessary.
• WordPress plugins let you add practically unlimited features to any web site quickly and inexpensively.
• WordPress plugins give your site virtually unlimited expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow ”non-techies” to own a site that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your website instant new enhancements and features.
• Some plugins are slightly more complex and could require some configuring.

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

Like many themes, thousands of WordPress plugins are available for WordPress users … and many of these great plugins are 100% FREE!

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

As mentioned earlier, you can find WP plugins that will do just about everything you need done.

There are WP plugins for:

• Blog Administration
• Content Syndication
• Online Traffic Generation
• User Engagement
• Social Sharing
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Reporting Tools
• Securing Your WordPress Blog

You can enhance your website with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Surveys
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• 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 Norwegian)
• 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 integration
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your site
• Set appointments and reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
• Redirect affiliate pages
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your posts and pages
• Migrate data from non-WordPress platforms
• Perform bulk data edits
• Fight SPAM
• Customize visitor discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Insert HTML and code elements into your posts, pages and sidebar menus
• Add formatted tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map of your business location
• Publish your posts automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and many others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you endless possibilities. If you are currently planning to build a website or blog, or your existing site was not built using WordPress, then consider getting a WP site or blog in the future, or you could be missing out on some serious functionality.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WP plugins are, let’s take a look at some practical advantages of adding a plugin to your website.

For example, if you want to publish content which is only accessible to some but not all users, you can install plugins to make a section of your post or page inaccessible, or create a professional membership site with customized login details for all users …

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

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

You can also add complex functionality to your site using relatively inexpensive paid WP plugins. For example, you can install plugins that integrate and automate functions on your pages such as user testimonial and event registration management …

And also set up a custom bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring software developers to code similar applications for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that can allow you to engage better with web visitors, clients and registered site members …

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site increased exposure).
• Share your posts with other web visitors on social networking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with other customers using forums or even set up a private social network on your site.
• Engage with your staff via live web conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Dial your business directly from their cellphones when visiting your pages
• Open a support ticket
• And much more …

Finally you, can even integrate sophisticated enterprise-level solutions with a WP “front end”. This allows you to manage the content that your visitors see on your site, while your third-party application handles the technical aspects …

WordPress Plugins – Useful Information

• There are lots of good plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your site with too many plugins, as this will start to affect your site’s resources and page loading speed. It also means more maintenance work for you resulting from potential conflicts.
• Install only the plugins you really use. Delete all inactive plugins from your site, as these use server resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with very little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing paid plugins, ensure that you check around a little and see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we provide on this site for more expert information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think carefully before using it on your website or blog. The WordPress platform changes frequently and older plugins that have not been updated can create problems.
• Ensure to always maintain all plugins updated to the latest version. Outdated plugin not only can create problems, they may also contain security 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 WordPress the most popular content management system available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand quickly without having to spend thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing on the topic of plugins:

Whatever functionality you want for your web presence, you can be sure that a WordPress plugin already exists that will do exactly what you need it to do, and that it will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the price will be reasonable.

(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 most certainly be developed for your business at a reasonable cost.

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

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