Tag: What Are WordPress Plugins

One of the most unique benefits of the WordPress software is that you can quickly and easily expand your WordPress site’s functionality using plugins.

About Plugins

No doubt, you probably have a device like a mobile phone. What do you do when you want access to something new on your device like a new application, game or productivity tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a software application that is simple and easy to install and integrates new functionality into your mobile phone.

(Just as there are social sharing apps …)

A WP plugin is similar to an app. You simply install and activate an application that provides new functionality to your WordPress site …

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

Typically, if you need to add a new feature to an already-built website, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, things could become fairly expensive, particularly if web developers have to add new code or edit code or develop programs that integrate with your existing set up.

This also applies when creating a web site. Businesses sometimes invest money in advance in features they may simply not need.

For this reason, we recommend using a cost-effective approach when setting up your web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a basic, professional business website up and running fast, then …

2) As more features or functionality become necessary, install new software modules with only a couple of mouse clicks that integrate seamlessly with your existing site, giving your website an entirely new and expanded range of useful capabilities, and …

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

Well, this is just what a plugin lets you do!

Benefits & Advantages Of WP Plugins

We began this blog 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 plugins.

In fact, many powerful plugins can be installed and activated on your sites.

WP plugins that you purchase are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of hiring a professional web developer to add the same functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are typically quite inexpensive.

Also, as WordPress makes its source code publicly available, any person can create, rewrite and customize any portion of the code. This has enabled thousands of professional software developers to enhance the WPsoftware.

• Plugins let you get started with just a simple yet professional online business presence and expand only if required.
• WordPress plugins allow you to add practically unlimited functionality to any web site easily and very inexpensively.
• WP plugins give your website practically endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow ”non-techies” to have a site that they can manage.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your website immediate capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins can be a little more complex and could require some configuration.

WordPress Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Often) 100% FREE!

Just like WP themes, tens of thousands of great plugins are available for WordPress users … and many of these great plugins are 100% FREE!

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find WordPress plugins that can do just about anything you can possibly need your web site to do.

There are WordPress plugins for:

• Website Management
• Content Distribution
• Online Traffic Generation
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Sharing
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Reporting
• Site Security

For example, you can expand a WP site with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Display advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single ordering with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation (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.
• Media integration
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events & bookings
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your website
• Set up client appointments and reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect visitors from specified pages to other areas on your site or other sites
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Exclude certain from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your pages and posts
• Migrate content from different CMS applications
• Search and replace data
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Inserting scripts and code elements into your posts
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map of your business location
• Post your posts automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and others
• Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you practically limitless possibilities. If you are planning to build a web site, or your existing website isn’t built with WordPress, then consider choosing WordPress in the future.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let me show you how you can benefit instantly by simply installing an inexpensive plugin on your web site.

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

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to improve your site in lots of ways. From installing functionality that improve your business, your visitors’ experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

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

You can also add sophisticated features to your website using inexpensive paid WP plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that automate tasks on your pages such as managing customer testimonials and booking events …

And also set up a custom bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to build custom applications for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that can enhance your site’s interactivity …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site added exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on social networks.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with other customers via online forums or even set up an online social network on your own domain.
• Engage with your support team using live web conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Call your business directly from their cellphones when visiting your website
• Get help via a customer support helpdesk
• And so much more …

Finally you, can even integrate sophisticated third-party applications using a WordPress “front end”. This enables you to manage your business sales and marketing, while the 3rd-party application handles the technical aspects …

Additional Tips About WordPress Plugins

• There are so many WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will affect your site’s performance and page loading times. It can also create more maintenance issues for you resulting from possible errors.
• Install only the plugins that you really use. Delete all deactivated plugins from your site, as these also utilize resources.
• Many free plugins normally receive little to no support from the plugin author. When considering paid plugins, we recommend that you check around a little and understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check our WordPress plugin reviews for additional expert 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 website or blog. The WordPress core application is updated often and older WordPress plugins can create problems.
• Always maintain all plugins updated to the latest software version. Older plugins not only can cause conflicts, they may also contain security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most popular content management system in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand without having to spend thousands of dollars on web development costs.

One last thing regarding WordPress plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you want for your web site, you can guarantee that a plugin already exists that will do what you want, and that it will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the price will be reasonable.

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

And, if by any chance this WP plugin is not available, then a custom plugin that does precisely what you would like it to do can probably be created for you for a very reasonable price.

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

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