Tag: What Are WordPress Plugins

One of the main advantages of building a website with WordPress is the ability to easily expand your WordPress web site’s functionality using applications called ’plugins’.

What Are Plugins?

No doubt, you probably own a device like a mobile phone. What happens when you want access to something new on your device like a new application, software or a new business tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little software that is really simple and easy to install and integrates new features into a smart phone.

(Just like there are social sharing apps …)

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

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

Normally, if you need to add a new feature to a site, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the features or enhancements are, this could become quite expensive, especially if website developers need to add new code or modify templates or develop programs to integrate with your current set up.

This is also applicable when starting a new web site. Businesses sometimes invest money in additional features they may simply not need.

For this reason, we suggest a cost-effective approach when developing a web site and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

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

2) As the need arises, add new software modules with a few clicks of the mouse that integrate with your existing website or blog, giving your web site an entirely new range of practical features and capabilities, and …

3) Cost not one dollar extra to add to your web site?

Well, that’s precisely what a WP plugin allows you to do!

Plugins – Benefits

Earlier, we compared 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, loads of fantastic plugins can be installed on your sites.

Plugins that you have to buy are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the cost of a Premium plugin to the price of hiring a professional web developer to add the same functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. ”paid”) plugins are generally quite inexpensive.

Also, since WordPress is an Open Source application, anybody can create, modify and customize any part of the WP code. This has enabled thousands of third-party web developers to enhance and contribute to the core software application.

• WP plugins allow you to start off with a basic site and then expand as necessary.
• WordPress plugins allow you to add practically endless functionality to your web site quickly, easily and inexpensively.
• Plugins give your digital business presence almost endless expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow ”non-techies” to own a site that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your site new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more advanced options and require some configuring.

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

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

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

As previously mentioned, you can find plugins that will do just about everything you could possibly need your site to do.

Plugin categories cover:

• Site Management
• Content Management
• Driving Web Visitors
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Monitoring
• Inserting Media – Video, Graphics, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Analysis
• WP SEO

You can expand a website with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• User Surveys
• Display banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Instant language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your pages from English to Norwegian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Cloud storage management
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your website
• Set client appointments and appointment reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and send you reports
• Redirect users from specific pages to other pages on your site or other sites
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Hide pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect post content sections
• Import content from different publishing applications
• Search and replace data
• Block SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. display Facebook comments)
• Inserting code and code elements into your posts
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google local search
• Add location maps
• Publicize your content automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and many others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you virtually endless possibilities. If you plan to build a website, or your existing website isn’t built with WordPress, then consider getting a WP site or blog added to your domain, or you could be missing out on some serious functionality.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let me show you how you can benefit instantly by simply adding an inexpensive plugin to your web site.

For example, if you need to protect your content, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full paid membership site with customized login details for every member …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to enhance your business site in lots of ways. From adding new features that will enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your ability to review visitor metrics …

To extending your site’s reach across social sites and search engines …

You can also add advanced features to your website using relatively inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that automate functionality on your website like user feedback and event bookings management …

And even run a complete bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring software developers to code these applications for you …

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

For example, your web visitors can:

• Post comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on various social sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with other members via forums or even set up a private online community on your own domain.
• Engage with your support staff using live webcam conferencing and chatrooms
• Call your business directly from their mobile phones while visiting your website
• Get help via a client helpdesk
• And much more …

Finally you, can even integrate sophisticated enterprise-level applications with a WP “front end”. This lets you manage your business sales and marketing, while the 3rd-party application handles the technological aspects …

Plugins – Some Useful Things You Should Know

• There are loads of great WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with too many plugins, as this can affect your website’s performance and page loading speed. It can also create more maintenance issues for you as a consequence of potential conflicts and errors.
• Only keep the plugins that you really use. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these use extra server resources.
• Many free plugins often come with little to no support from the plugin author. When considering paid plugins, make sure you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we provide here for more helpful information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two or more years), then think carefully before installing it. WordPress changes often and outdated plugins can cause issues.
• Always upgrade your plugins. Outdated plugins not only can cause issues, they could also have vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most popular content publishing platform available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add instant features to their website without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web development costs.

One last thing regarding plugins:

Whatever feature you want for your web site, you can be sure that a plugin already exists that will do just what you need it to do, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the cost will be minimal.

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

And, if by any chance such a WordPress plugin does not exist, then one can certainly be developed for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of WP plugins – what they are and how they can significantly expand your website. See our related posts section to learn about more great WordPress plugins that we recommend using.

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