Tag: What Are WordPress Plugins

One of the most powerful benefits of using the WordPress website publishing software is the ability to quickly and easily enhance your WP site’s functionality using inexpensive called ’plugins’.

What Are WordPress Plugins?

No doubt, you probably have a smart phone. What happens when you would like access to something new on your phone like a new application, software or a new productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is really easy to install and immediately integrates new functionality into any mobile phone.

(Just like you can find social sharing apps for mobile devices …)

A WP plugin is quite similar to an app. You install a software application that provides new functionality to your site …

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

Generally, expanding the functionality of an already-built web site involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancements, the cost can be quite significant, particularly if website developers need to create new code or modify programs or install programs to integrate into your current site.

This is also applicable when creating a new website. Companies often invest money up-front for extra features or customizations they probably will never need.

For this reason, we suggest considering a sustainable strategy when growing your digital presence presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As the need for new capabilities becomes evident, add new software modules with a couple of clicks of the mouse directly from within your dashboard area, giving your web site an entirely new range of practical capabilities, and also …

3) Cost not one dollar more to add to your website?

Well, that’s precisely what WordPress plugins allow you to do!

Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

We started this blog post by comparing plugins with ’apps’. In a similar way that many apps are free to download and some may cost a little money, the same applies with WP plugins.

In fact, many plugins are available at no cost to users.

Plugins that cost money are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the price of hiring a professional web developer to add the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are generally very inexpensive.

Also, because WordPress is an Open Source application, any person can create, modify and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has allowed many professional software developers to enhance and contribute to the core WordPress software application.

• Plugins let you start off simply with a basic website and add new features and enhancements to your site only if necessary.
• Plugins allow you to add almost endless functionality to your site easily and quite cheaply.
• Plugins give your digital presence almost endless expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical website owners to own a website that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your website with new capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more advanced options and could require some configuration.

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

Like themes, thousands of great WP plugins are currently available for WP users … often at no cost!

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

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

There are plugins for:

• Blog Management
• Content Syndication
• Traffic
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Connectivity
• Media Management Automation
• Increasing Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting Applications
• Website Security

You can expand your WP site with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Surveys
• Display banners
• E-commerce (from managing single ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation plugins (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
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your site
• Set up client appointments and reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect users from old pages to other pages on your site or other sites
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude specific from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your posts and pages
• Migrate information from different publishing platforms
• Search and replace data
• Block SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. display Facebook comments)
• Inserting HTML and script elements into your posts and pages
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add a map
• Publicize your posts automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you practically endless possibilities. If you are currently planning to build a website, or your existing site was not built using WordPress, then consider getting a WP site or blog built on your domain, or you will be missing out on some serious features.

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

For example, if you need to publish private content, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full membership site with separate login details for all users …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to improve your site in so many ways. From adding functionality that will improve your business, your site’s user experience and your ability to review site metrics …

To extending your business reach and visibility across social sites and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your website using inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can install plugins that integrate and automate processes on your website like user testimonial and event registration management …

And even set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying software developers to code custom functionality for you …

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

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with your support team through forums or even set up an online community on your domain.
• Engage with members of your team via live video chats
• Dial your business from their cellphones when visiting your site
• Get support via a client helpdesk
• And so much more …

You can even integrate complex third-party applications with a WP “front end”. This enables you to control your business marketing, while the 3rd-party application handles the technological functions …

WordPress Plugins – Additional Information

• There are so many WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can affect your website’s performance and page loading speed. It also creates more maintenance work for you as a consequence of possible conflicts and errors.
• Install only the plugins you really need. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these use extra server resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with very little to no support from the plugin author. When considering paid plugins, ensure that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we publish here for more 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 twice before installing it. WordPress changes frequently and older plugins that have not been updated can cause conflicts.
• Make sure that you always keep all plugins updated. Older plugin not only can cause errors, they may also have vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WP plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most downloaded 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 web development costs.

One last thing regarding WordPress plugins:

If there is a functionality you want for your website, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already authored one that will do what you need, and that this plugin will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be reasonably inexpensive.

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

And, if by chance such a plugin does not exist, then a custom plugin that does just what you want it to do can most certainly be coded for you for a reasonable price.

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

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