Tag: What Are WordPress Plugins

One of the main features of the WordPress platform is the ability to quickly and easily expand your WP website or blog’s functionality using plugins.

What Are WP Plugins?

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

You download and install an app!

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

(Just like you will find social sharing apps …)

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

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

Generally, expanding the functionality of an already-built web site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new feature or enhancement is, the cost can be fairly significant, particularly if website developers have to create new code or modify templates or install programs that integrate with your current set up.

This is also applicable to creating a new website. Companies sometimes spend money up-front on extra components they probably will never need.

To keep your business costs to a minimum, we recommend using a modular approach when developing a web site and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

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

2) As you need more features and functionality, just add new software modules with a couple of clicks of the mouse that integrate with your website or blog, giving your web site a completely new range of useful functionality, and also …

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

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

Plugins – Benefits

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

In fact, thousands of plugins can be installed and activated on your sites.

Plugins that cost money are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the cost of purchasing a Premium WP plugin to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to get similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins cost very little.

Also, because WordPress makes its source code publicly available, anyone can create, edit and customize any portion of the code. This has enabled thousands of professional web developers to build more applications that enhance the WordPress software than you can possibly imagine.

• Plugins let you get started with a simple site and add new features and enhancements to your site as required.
• WP plugins allow you to add almost unlimited functionality to your web site easily, quickly and very inexpensively.
• WP plugins give you almost endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical website owners to have a digital presence that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your site new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins are a little more advanced and require some configuring.

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

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

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

As previously mentioned, you will find WP plugins that can do almost everything you could possibly want your website to do.

Plugin categories cover:

• User Administration
• Content Syndication
• Web Traffic Generation
• User Interactivity
• Social Sharing
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Reporting Applications
• Website Optimization

You can enhance your website with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• User Surveys
• Managing advertising banners
• E-commerce (from managing single sales with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonial forms
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your pages from English to Spanish)
• 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
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your website
• Set up appointments and appointment reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and send you reports
• Redirect web pages
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Hide pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect page content sections
• Migrate data from non-WordPress applications
• Perform bulk data edits
• Block SPAM
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Inserting HTML and script elements into your website’s header or footer
• Add tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add business location maps
• Post your content automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and many others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As it’s clear to see, WordPress plugins give you endless business scalability. If you are planning to build a website or blog for your business, or your existing website was not built using WordPress, then consider choosing it in the future.

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

For example, if you want content protection, you can install plugins to make a section of your post or page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a professional paid membership site with customized login details for users …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to enhance your site in lots of different ways. From adding functionality that can enhance your business, your web users’ experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

To extending your business visibility across various social sites 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 tasks on your pages such as user feedback and event registrations management …

And even set up a complete bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying web developers to create custom applications for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that will allow you to engage even more with web visitors, customers and registered site members …

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Share your content with other web users on various social sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with other users through forums or even set up a private online social network on your own site.
• Engage with members of your team through live video chats
• Dial your business directly from their devices when visiting your website
• Get support via a dedicated client helpdesk
• And much more …

Finally you, can even integrate sophisticated “back end” applications with a WP “front end”. This lets you manage your business sales and marketing, while your third-party application handles the technological side of things …

Plugins – Additional Information

• There are lots of plugins available. Be careful of overloading your site with too many plugins, as this will begin to affect your site’s performance and site loading times. It can also create more maintenance issues for you as a result of possible conflicts.
• Only keep the plugins you really use. Delete 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 considering premium plugins, make sure you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we publish on this site for more useful information.
• If you see that an unsupported 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. The WordPress core software changes on a regular basis and older plugins can cause conflicts.
• Ensure that you always update your plugins. Older plugin not only can create errors and conflicts, they may also contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, plugins are an important part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most preferred content management system in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add instant features to their web presence without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web development.

One last thing on the topic of plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you need for your web site, you can guarantee that a WordPress plugin probably exists that will do what you need, and that it can either be downloaded for FREE, or if it’s a premium plugin, that it will be reasonably affordable.

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

And, if by chance this plugin is not available, then one can probably be developed for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of plugins – what plugins are and how they can help to improve your blog. See our related posts section to learn about more useful WordPress plugins that we recommend using.

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