Tag: What Are WordPress Plugins

One of the most useful benefits of WordPress is the ability to quickly and easily increase your WP website’s functionality using plugins.

What Are WP Plugins?

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

You download and install an app!

An app is a piece of software that is very simple and easy to install and instantly integrates new features and functionality into any mobile device.

(Just like you can find social sharing apps …)

A plugin is like an app. You install and activate a software that provides new functionality to your WP site …

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

Typically, if you decide to expand the functionality of an existing web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the feature or enhancements, the cost can be significant, especially if it involves modifying code.

This is also applicable when setting up a new website. Organizations sometimes invest money in advance for bells and whistles they probably will never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we suggest a cost-effective strategy when developing your digital presence presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply with minimal cost involved. Get your web site up and running fast, then …

2) As more features become necessary, add new software modules with only a few mouse clicks that integrate seamlessly with your site, to give your site a whole new range of capabilities and functionality, and …

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

Well, this is just what WP plugins let you do!

Benefits And Advantages Of Plugins

I began this blog post by comparing plugins with apps. Just like some apps are free to download and some may cost a little bit of money, so do plugins.

In fact, thousands of wonderful plugins are freely available for users.

Plugins that cost money are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the price of paying for professional web development services to add similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are priced quite low.

Also, as WordPress is an Open Source application, anybody can create, modify and customize any portion of the code. This has enabled many professional software developers to build more new tools that “plug into” WordPress than you can possibly imagine.

• WordPress plugins let you start off simply with a simple web site and add new features and enhancements to your site only if necessary.
• WP plugins let you add almost unlimited features to any site easily, quickly and quite inexpensively.
• Plugins give you practically endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow business owners to have a site that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your site with instant new capabilities and enhancements.
• Some plugins can be slightly more advanced and may require some configuration.

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

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

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

As previously mentioned, you will find WP plugins that will do just about anything you need done.

WP plugin categories cover:

• Site Management
• Content Syndication
• Traffic
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Sharing
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Monitoring & Reporting Tools
• Securing Your WordPress Blog

You can enhance your website with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• User Surveys
• Rotating ad banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site from English to Italian)
• 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
• Managing events
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your site
• Set appointments and appointment reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect page content
• Migrate data from non-WP applications
• Perform bulk data replacements
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Insert scripts and script elements into your posts, pages and sidebar menus
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add location maps
• Post your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and others
• Show countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

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

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let me show you some practical advantages of adding a plugin to your web site.

For example, if you need to publish private content, you can install plugins to make an area of your post or page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a complete paid membership site with separate login details for every member …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to improve your web site in so many different ways. From adding new features that enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your ability to review visitor metrics …

To extending your site’s visibility across many social networks and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your site using relatively inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that automate processes on your website such as displaying customer testimonials and event bookings …

And also set up a custom bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying web developers to design custom applications for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that can enhance user engagement …

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 displayed throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Bookmark your content on various social sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with other users via forums or even set up a private community on your own site.
• Engage with members of your team using live video chats
• Dial your business from their laptops while browsing your pages
• Get support via a client support helpdesk
• And much more …

You can also integrate complex enterprise applications with a WP “front end”. This lets you manage the content that your visitors see on your site, while your third-party application handles the technological side of things …

Additional Tips About WP Plugins

• There are lots of good plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can affect your website’s performance and site loading times. It also creates more maintenance issues for you as a consequence of possible errors.
• Install only the plugins you really need to use. Delete any 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 some reviews online and see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we publish here for additional useful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before using it. WordPress is updated frequently and outdated WordPress plugins can create problems.
• Always upgrade your plugins. Outdated plugin not only can create issues, they may also have vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, WP plugins are an important part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most preferred CMS in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand quickly without spending thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing on the topic of plugins:

If there is a feature you need for your website, you can guarantee that a WP plugin probably exists that will do what you need, and that it will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be surprisingly affordable.

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

And, if by chance this plugin has not been created yet, then one can probably be created for your business for a reasonable price.

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

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