Tag: What Are WordPress Plugins

One of the most powerful advantages of using WordPress is that you can quickly expand your WP website or blog’s functionality using applications called plugins.

About WordPress Plugins

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

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a software that is very simple and easy to install and integrates new features and functionality into any mobile device.

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

A plugin is really similar to an app. You simply download and install a little software application that provides new functionality to your site …

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

Almost always, if you want to add a new feature to a web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the new feature or enhancement, things can become quite expensive, especially if it requires website development.

This also applies when creating a new website. Business owners sometimes invest money in advance in components they may never need.

For this reason, we suggest using a sustainable strategy when setting up your web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As you need new features and functionality, install new applications with just a few clicks of the mouse that integrate with your current web site, giving your site a completely new range of possibilities, and …

3) Cost not one cent extra to download and install on your site?

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

Benefits Of Using Plugins

I began this article by comparing plugins with apps. In a similar way that many apps are free to download and some cost a little money, the same applies to plugins.

In fact, thousands of powerful plugins are freely available for users.

WP plugins that you purchase are referred to as ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the price of paying for web development services to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are priced quite cheaply.

Also, because WordPress makes its code publicly available, anyone can create, modify and customize any portion of the WP code. This has enabled many professional software development professionals to enhance the WordPresssoftware.

• Plugins let you get started with a simple web presence and then add new features and enhancements to your site only when necessary.
• WP plugins allow you to add practically endless features to any site quickly and inexpensively.
• WP plugins give you practically endless expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow anyone to own a website that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your website with new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins can be a little more advanced and may need some initial configuring.

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

Just like themes, thousands of great WP plugins are currently available to WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you can find plugins that can do almost everything you need done.

Plugin categories cover:

• Website Administration
• Content Management
• Increasing Site Traffic
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Sharing
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Reporting Applications
• Optimizing Your WordPress Site

You can enhance a business online presence with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• User Surveys
• Rotating advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonial forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to German)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Cloud storage management
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your site
• Set up client appointments and reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• 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 post content
• Migrate data from non-WordPress applications
• Search and replace content
• Block SPAM commenting
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Inserting scripts and script elements into your posts
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Syndicate your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and many others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As you can clearly see, WP plugins give you virtually limitless business scalability. If you are currently planning to build a web site, or your existing site isn’t built with WordPress, then consider using WordPress in the future.

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

For example, if you want to publish content which is only accessible to some but not all users, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on your page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full membership site with customized login details for users …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to improve your website in so many different ways. From adding features that will improve your business, your visitors’ 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 advanced functionality to your site using relatively inexpensive paid WordPress plugins. For example, you can download plugins that automate features on your website like managing customer testimonials and booking events …

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

You can also take advantage of native WordPress commenting features and plugins that will increase visitor engagement …

For example, your visitors can:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Share your content with other online visitors on social networking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with other members using forums or even set up a private online social network on your domain.
• Engage with members of your team through live chats
• Call your business directly from their laptops while browsing your site
• Get support via a customer helpdesk
• And so much more …

You can also integrate complex third-party solutions within a WP “front end”. This lets you manage your business sales and marketing, while the 3rd-party application handles the technological areas …

Some Useful Tips About Plugins

• There are loads of great WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your server with too many plugins, as this will begin to affect your website’s performance and site loading times. It also creates more maintenance issues for you resulting from potential conflicts and errors.
• Only keep those plugins you really need. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these also use resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with very little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing paid plugins, we recommend that you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new improvements, 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 while (e.g. two years), then think carefully before using it. WordPress updates frequently and out-of-date plugins can create problems.
• Ensure that you always upgrade your plugins. Outdated plugin not only can cause conflicts, they may also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, plugins are an important part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most downloaded content management system 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 development.

One last thing about plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you want for your web site, you can be sure that a someone has probably already authored one that will do exactly what you want it to do, and that it can either be downloaded at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be reasonably affordable.

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

And, if by any chance this plugin has not been created yet, then a custom plugin that does just what you want it to do can certainly be developed for your business for a reasonable price.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of WP plugins – what they are and how they can significantly improve your web site. See our related posts section to learn about more popular plugins that we recommend using.

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