Tag: What Are WordPress Plugins

One of the main features of WordPress is that you can quickly increase your WordPress website’s functionality using plugins.

What Are WP Plugins?

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

You download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is simple and easy to install and integrates new features and functionality into any smart phone.

(Just as you will find social sharing apps for mobile devices …)

A plugin is really similar to an app. You install and activate a little software application that adds new functionality to your WordPress website …

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

Almost always, if you want to expand the functionality of an already-built website, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, the cost can be fairly significant, particularly if it involves modifying code.

This is also applicable when developing a new website. Companies sometimes fork out money for components they probably will never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we suggest considering a sustainable approach when developing a presence online presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As more features and functionality are needed, just add new software modules with just a couple of mouse clicks directly from within your WP dashboard panel, and give your site a whole new and expanded range of practical capabilities, and …

3) Cost not a single dollar more to download and install on your website?

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

WordPress Plugins – Benefits & Advantages

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

In fact, many plugins are freely available for users.

WP plugins that you have to buy are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the price of hiring a professional web developer to get similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins cost very little.

Also, as WordPress makes its code available to everyone, anyone can create, rewrite and customize any portion of the WP code. This has allowed many third-party web development professionals to create more tools that add new functionality to WordPress than you can probably imagine.

• WP plugins allow you to start off simply with a basic website and then expand when required.
• Plugins let you add practically endless features to your web presence easily and cheaply.
• Plugins give you almost unlimited expansion capabilities.
• WP plugins allow ”non-techies” to own a site that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your website instant new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins are slightly more advanced and may need some initial configuration.

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

Like themes, thousands of WordPress plugins are available for WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

You can view and download thousands of plugins from the Free WordPress Plugin Directory …

As mentioned earlier, you can find plugins that can do just about anything you want done.

Plugin categories cover:

• Blog Management
• Content Distribution
• Increasing Site Visitors
• User Engagement
• Social Media
• Managing Media – Videos, Graphics, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales And Marketing Automation
• Improving Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting Tools
• Securing Your

You can add features to your WP site with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Managing banners
• E-commerce (from managing single ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your site’s content from English to Norwegian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage management
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell spots on your website
• Set up appointments and reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• 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.)
• Protect page content
• Import content from other publishing platforms
• Perform bulk data edits
• Block SPAM commenting
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. display Facebook comments)
• Inserting code and code elements into your posts, pages and sidebars
• Add tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google local search
• Add a map of your business location
• Distribute your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and many others
• Show countdown timers (for special offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you limitless possibilities. If you plan to build a web site, or your existing web site isn’t built with WordPress, then consider choosing WordPress in the future.

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

For example, if you need content protection, you can use plugins to make an area of a post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a professional paid membership site with personal login details for users …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to improve your web site in lots of different ways. From installing functionality that can enhance your business, your web users’ experience and your ability to review visitor metrics …

To extending your business reach across many social media and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your site using inexpensive premium WordPress plugins. For example, you can purchase plugins that integrate and automate functions on your website such as managing customer testimonials and event registration details …

And even run a custom bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying web developers to code custom applications for you …

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

For example, your visitors can:

• 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 increased exposure).
• Bookmark your content on social media.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with your support staff using forums or even set up an online community on your domain.
• Engage with members of your team using live chats
• Dial your business directly from their mobile phones while visiting your site
• Get help via a dedicated client help desk
• And so much more …

You can even integrate sophisticated third-party solutions using a WordPress “front end”. This lets you control the content that your visitors see on your web site, while the third-party application handles the technical side of things …

WP Plugins – Useful Things To Know

• There are lots of plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with too many plugins, as this will affect your website’s performance and page loading times. It also creates more maintenance work for you as a consequence of possible errors.
• Only keep those plugins that you really use. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these use server resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive very little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering paid WordPress plugins, we recommend that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check our plugin recommendations for additional information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think twice before installing it. WordPress changes often and outdated plugins can cause conflicts.
• Always keep your plugins updated. Older plugins not only can cause errors and conflicts, they could also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WP plugins are an important aspect of WordPress and contribute to making it the most downloaded website publishing platform available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing regarding WP plugins:

If there is a functionality you need for your website, you can be sure that a plugin currently 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 price will be very reasonable.

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

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

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

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