Tag: What Are WordPress Plugins

One of the main benefits of using WordPress is the ability to quickly and easily enhance your WP site’s functionality using applications called plugins.

About WP Plugins

Like most people, you probably use a device like a cell phone. What happens when you would like access to something new on your phone like a new game or a productivity tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

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

(Just like there are social sharing apps …)

A WP plugin is very much like an app. You simply install and activate an application that adds new functionality to your WP web site …

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

Generally, if you plan to add new features to a website, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the new feature or enhancement is, this could get quite expensive, particularly if it involves website development.

This also applies to developing a new web site. Organizations sometimes invest up front in extra features or options they may not need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we recommend a modular approach when growing your web site and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply and with minimal cost involved. Get your business web presence up and running quickly, then …

2) As you need new features and functionality, you can add new software modules with just a few clicks of the mouse directly from within your WP administration area, giving your website or blog a completely new and expanded range of useful functionality, and also …

3) Cost not one dollar extra to install on your website?

Well, that’s precisely what a plugin lets you do!

Benefits Of Using Plugins

We started this post by comparing WordPress plugins with mobile apps. In the same way that some apps are free to download and some apps may cost a little money, so do plugins.

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

WordPress plugins that you purchase are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare these to the price of hiring a professional web developer to add the same functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are generally quite inexpensive.

Also, since WordPress makes its source code available to everyone, any person can create, rewrite and customize any portion of the code. This has enabled thousands of professional software developers to enhance the WordPresssoftware.

• Plugins let you start off simply with a basic site and then add new features and enhancements to your site if required.
• WordPress plugins allow you to add almost unlimited features to any web site quickly and very cheaply.
• Plugins give your online presence almost endless expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical users to own 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 give your site new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins can be slightly more advanced and may require some configuration.

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

Just like WP themes, loads of WordPress plugins are made available for WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find WordPress plugins that can do almost everything you need your website to do.

WP plugin categories cover:

• Website Administration
• Content Management
• Online Traffic Generation
• User Interactivity
• Social Monitoring
• Media Management Automation
• Increasing Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Analysis
• Website Security

You can expand a WordPress site with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from managing single sales with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonial forms
• Language translation plugins (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 interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage management
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your blog
• Set up appointments and reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect users from missing pages to other pages on your site or other websites
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Exclude pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide post content
• Migrate content from non-WordPress applications
• Perform bulk content replacements
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Inserting HTML and script elements into your pages
• Add tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Post your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you endless business scalability. If you are planning to build a website for your business, or your existing site isn’t built with WordPress, then consider getting one built on your domain, or you will be missing out on some serious functionality.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using WordPress plugins, let’s take a look at how you can benefit by simply installing a plugin on your web site.

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

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

To increasing your business visibility across multiple social networks and search engines …

You can also add advanced functionality to your website using relatively inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can install plugins that automate tasks on your pages such as customer feedback and event registration management …

And also run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring web developers to design the same applications for you …

You can also take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that will make your site even more interactive …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Share your posts with other web visitors on social media.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with other customers through online forums or even set up a private online community on your own site.
• Engage with your staff through live chats
• Dial your business from their cellphones when visiting your website
• Open support tickets
• And so much more …

You can even integrate sophisticated enterprise-level applications with a WordPress “front end”. This allows you to manage your business marketing, while your third-party application handles the technical side of things …

Plugins – Additional Things You Should Know

• There are many plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with too many plugins, as this can start to affect your site’s resources and page loading times. It can also mean more maintenance work for you resulting from possible errors.
• Only keep the plugins that you really use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these also consume server resources.
• Many free plugins normally receive little to no support from the plugin author. When considering paid plugins, we recommend that you check some reviews online and see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of our WP plugin recommendations for additional information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think carefully before using it. The WordPress application changes on a regular basis and older plugins that have not been updated can create issues.
• Always update your plugins. Outdated plugins not only can create issues, they may also contain security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most popular CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand quickly without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing regarding WP plugins:

Whatever feature you want for your website, you can guarantee that a WP plugin probably exists that will do exactly what you want it to do, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be surprisingly inexpensive.

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

And, if by any chance this WordPress plugin does not exist, then it can certainly be coded for you at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of WP plugins – what they are and how they can expand your WP site. See our published posts to learn more about usingplugins.

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