Tag: What Are WordPress Plugins

One of the most unique advantages of choosing the WordPress platform is that you can quickly expand your WP web site’s functionality using plugins.

About Plugins

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

You download and install an app!

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

(Just as you can find social sharing apps for smart devices …)

A WP plugin is very much like an app. You install a software application that provides new functionality to your WP web site …

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

Generally, expanding the functionality of a web site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, things could become quite expensive, particularly if web developers need to add new code or edit templates or develop programs that integrate into your current set up.

This is also applicable when developing a new web site. Companies will often fork out money up front for additional features they probably will never need.

For this reason, we recommend a modular approach when setting up your presence online presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As more features become necessary, add new applications with a few mouse clicks that integrate seamlessly with your current web site, and give your web site a completely new and expanded range of practical functionality, and also …

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

Well, this is exactly what a WP plugin lets you do!

Benefits And Advantages Of WP Plugins

Earlier, we compared WP plugins with ’apps’. Just like many apps are free to download and some may cost a little bit of money, so do plugins.

In fact, loads of fantastic plugins can be downloaded to your site at no cost.

Plugins that cost money are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when you compare these to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to add the same functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are priced quite low.

Also, as WordPress makes its source code available to everyone, anyone can create, rewrite and customize any portion of the code. This has allowed many third-party software developers to enhance the WordPresssoftware.

• WP plugins let you get started with just a basic web site and then expand if required.
• WP plugins let you add practically unlimited functionality to your web site quickly and inexpensively.
• WordPress plugins give your website virtually endless expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical website owners to have a web presence that they can manage.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your site immediate enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins offer more extensive features and may require some configuring.

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

Just like themes, loads of WordPress plugins are available for WP users … for FREE!

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

As previously mentioned, you can find WordPress plugins that will do just about everything you could think of.

Plugin categories cover:

• Website Management
• Content Management
• Web Traffic Generation
• User Interactivity
• Social Sharing
• Inserting Media – Videocasts, Graphics, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales And Marketing Automation
• Increasing Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Reporting Applications
• WP SEO

You can add features to your WordPress site with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Managing banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonial forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to French)
• 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 integration
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events & bookings
• Business directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your site
• Set up appointments and reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and send you reports
• Redirect users from specific pages to other areas 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 sitemaps
• Exclude pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your posts and pages
• Import data from different CMS applications
• Perform bulk content replacements
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
• Inserting scripts and script elements into your pages
• Add tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add location maps
• Distribute your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr 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, WP plugins give you virtually endless possibilities. If you plan to build a website or blog for your business, or your existing site was not built using WordPress, then consider getting a WordPress site or blog added to your domain, or you will be missing out on some serious features.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using WP plugins, let me show you some practical advantages of installing a plugin on your site.

For example, if you need to protect your content, you can install plugins to make a section of a post or page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a professional membership site with separate login details for every user …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to improve your site in lots of ways. From adding new features that improve your business, your web users’ experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

To increasing your business reach across a number of social sites and search engines …

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

And also set up a complete bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to code these functionality for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that will allow you to engage better with your visitors, customers and registered site users …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site increased exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on various social sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with your team using forums or even set up a private online social network on your own domain.
• Engage with members of your team using live webcam conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Dial your business from their devices when visiting your website
• Open support tickets
• And so much more …

Finally you, can also integrate complex “back end” applications within a WordPress “front end”. This allows you to manage the content that your visitors see on your site, while your 3rd-party application handles the technological side of things …

Useful Information About Plugins

• There are lots of awesome plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with too many plugins, as this can eventually affect your site’s performance and page loading times. It can also create more maintenance work for you resulting from potential conflicts.
• Only keep those plugins that you really use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use resources.
• Many free plugins normally come with very little to no support from the plugin author. When considering paid WP plugins, we recommend that you check around a little and understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of our plugin reviews for more 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 installing it on your website. The WordPress platform is updated frequently and older plugins that have not been updated can create issues.
• Always update your plugins to the latest version. Older plugin not only can create errors, they could also contain security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an important part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most powerful, flexible and scalable CMS in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand quickly without having to spend thousands of dollars on web developers.

One last thing about plugins:

If there is any functionality you want for your web presence, you can be sure that a someone has probably already developed one that will do what you want it to do, and that this plugin will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be fairly affordable.

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

And, if by any chance this WordPress plugin is not available, then one can probably be developed for you for a reasonable price.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of WP plugins – what they are and how they can help enhance the functionality of your web site. See our related posts section to learn more about usingplugins.

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