Tag: What Are WordPress Plugins

One of the most unique advantages of choosing the WordPress content publishing software is that you can easily increase your WordPress website or blog’s functionality using plugins.

About Plugins

No doubt, you most likely use a mobile phone. What happens when you want access to something new on your device like a new application, game or a new tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little software application that is really easy to install and adds new features to any smart device.

(Just like there are social sharing apps …)

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

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

Typically, if you need to add a new feature to a web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the new features or enhancement, the cost can be quite significant, especially if website developers have to add new code or modify templates or install scripts that integrate with your existing site.

This is also applicable when creating a web site. Businesses tend to invest in added features or options they probably will never need.

For this reason, we suggest using a sustainable approach when setting up a web site and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get your website up and running fast, then …

2) As you need more features, simply install new software modules with only a few mouse clicks directly from your administration panel, giving your website or blog a completely new and expanded range of capabilities and functionality, and also …

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

Well, this is precisely what a WP plugin allows you to do!

WP Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

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

In fact, loads of powerful plugins are available at no cost to users.

WordPress plugins that cost money are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare these to the price of paying for web development services to add the same functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins cost very little.

Also, as WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, anybody can create, rewrite and customize any portion of the code. This has allowed many third-party software development companies to build more plugins that add new features to WordPress than you can imagine.

• WP plugins allow you to get started with a simple website and then add new features and enhancements to your site as necessary.
• WP plugins let you add practically unlimited functionality to any website easily, quickly and very cheaply.
• Plugins give your web site virtually endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow ”non-techies” to own 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 immediate capabilities and enhancements.
• Some plugins provide more advanced features and may require some initial configuring.

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

Just like WordPress themes, loads of WordPress plugins are made available to WordPress users … and many of these great plugins are 100% FREE!

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

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

There are WordPress plugins for:

• Web Site Management
• Content Syndication
• Traffic
• User Interactivity
• Social Media
• Adding Media – Videos, Images, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales And Marketing Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Analysis
• WP Security

For example, you can enhance your business online presence with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Surveys
• Managing advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your site’s content from English to German)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Faster page loading
• Managing events
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your blog
• Set up client appointments and appointment reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect visitors from specified pages to other areas on your site or other sites
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Exclude pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide post content sections
• Migrate data from non-WordPress applications
• Search and replace content
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
• Insert scripts and script elements into your pages
• Add tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google local search
• Add business location maps
• Distribute your content automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and many others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you endless business flexibility. If you plan to build a website, or your existing website wasn’t built using WordPress, then consider using it in the future.

In case you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let’s take a look at some practical advantages of installing an inexpensive plugin on your website.

For example, if you need to protect your content, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on your post or page inaccessible, or create a professional membership site with customized login details for every member …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to improve your web site in lots of ways. From installing new features that enhance your business, your visitors’ experience and your ability to analyze website metrics …

To increasing your business reach and visibility across social media and search engines …

You can also add complex functionality to your site using inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that integrate and automate functions on your website like managing customer testimonials and event bookings …

And even run a custom bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying programmers to create these applications for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that will make your site even more interactive …

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with increased exposure).
• Share your content with other web users on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online with your team via forums or even set up a private online social network on your own domain.
• Engage with members of your team using live chats
• Dial your business from their mobile phones while browsing your site
• Get support via a user helpdesk
• And much more …

Finally you, can even integrate sophisticated “back end” solutions with a WP “front end”. This allows you to control your business sales and marketing, while your 3rd-party application handles the technological side of things …

Additional Information About Plugins

• There are many awesome plugins available. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this will affect your site’s resources and site loading speed. It also means more maintenance work for you resulting from possible errors.
• Only keep those plugins you really plan to use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with little to no support from the plugin author. When considering paid plugins, ensure that you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we provide on this site for more useful 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 site. WordPress is updated often and older plugins that have not been updated can cause problems.
• Make sure to always maintain all plugins updated. Outdated plugins not only can create issues, they could also have security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, plugins are an important part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most powerful, flexible and scalable website management software available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new features to their web presence without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web development.

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 already exists that will do exactly what you need it to do, and that this plugin will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the cost will be reasonable.

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

And, if by chance this plugin does not exist, then it can certainly be written for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of WP plugins – what they are and how they can significantly to improve your blog. See our related posts section to learn about more great plugins that we recommend using.

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