Tag: What Are WordPress Plugins

One of the main features of the WordPress website management platform is that you can easily enhance your WP website’s functionality using inexpensive (and often completely free) applications called ’plugins’.

Understanding Plugins

Like most people, you most likely use a device like 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 tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a piece of software that is very easy to install and immediately adds new features to a smart phone.

(Just like you will find social sharing apps …)

A plugin is like an app. You simply download and install an application that provides new functionality to your website or blog …

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

Almost always, if you want to add new features to an already-built website, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the new feature or enhancement is, the cost can be significant, especially if it requires website development.

This is also applicable to setting up a website or business blog. Companies will often invest in features they probably will never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we recommend using a cost-effective strategy when setting up a web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As more features or functionality are required, just add new software modules with just a few clicks of the mouse that integrate seamlessly with your website or blog, to give your website or blog a completely new and expanded range of capabilities and functionality, and …

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

Well, this is just what WordPress plugins allow you to do!

Benefits And Advantages Of Using WordPress Plugins

Earlier, we compared WP plugins with mobile apps. In a similar way that many apps are free to download and some apps cost a little money, the same is true with WP plugins.

In fact, thousands of plugins can be downloaded and installed on your websites.

Plugins that cost money are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins cost very little.

Also, because WordPress makes its code publicly available, any web developer can create, modify and customize any portion of the WP code. This has enabled thousands of third-party web development professionals to build more plugins that expand the WordPress platform than you can possibly imagine.

• Plugins let you start off with only a simple site and add new features and enhancements to your site only when required.
• WordPress plugins let you add practically unlimited functionality to any site easily and inexpensively.
• Plugins give you virtually endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical users to have a digital presence that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your site with instant new capabilities and enhancements.
• Some plugins are a little more complex and could require some initial configuration.

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

Just like WordPress themes, loads of great WP plugins are made available for WordPress users … often at no cost!

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

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

There are WP plugins for:

• User Administration
• Content Distribution
• Driving Site Visitors
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Connectivity
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Analysis Applications
• Securing Your WP Blog

You can add features to a WP site with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Managing advertising banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonial forms
• Automatic language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site from English to French)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your site
• Set up client appointments and appointment reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and send you reports
• Redirect users from broken pages to other areas on your site or other websites
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your posts and pages
• Import information from non-WP platforms
• Search and replace content
• Fight SPAM
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. display Facebook comments)
• Inserting code and code elements into your pages
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google local search
• Add a map of your business location
• Post your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and others
• Show countdown timers (for special offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As it’s clear to see, WordPress plugins give you limitless business scalability. If you are currently planning to build a web site, or your existing website isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider getting one added to your domain, or you will be missing out on some serious functionality.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let’s take a look at how you can benefit instantly by installing a plugin on your site.

For example, if you need to publish content which is only accessible to some users, you can install plugins to make an area of a page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a complete membership site with customized login details for users …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to enhance your business site in so many ways. From adding new features that will enhance your business, your visitors’ experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

To increasing your business visibility across social media and search engines …

You can also add advanced functionality to your site using relatively inexpensive paid WP plugins. For example, you can install plugins that automate features on your site like displaying customer testimonials and booking events …

And even set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring software developers to code custom functionality for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that will increase visitor engagement …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Post comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Share your posts with other online visitors on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online with other customers using forums or even set up a private social network on your site.
• Engage with members of your team through live chats
• Dial your business directly from their laptops when visiting your pages
• Get help via a client help desk
• And much more …

Finally you, can even integrate complex “back end” solutions with a WordPress “front end”. This allows you to control your business marketing, while the 3rd-party application handles the technical side of things …

Additional Information About WordPress Plugins

• There are many plugins available. Be careful of overloading your site with too many plugins, as this can begin to affect your website’s resources and site loading times. It also creates more maintenance work for you as a consequence of possible conflicts and errors.
• Only keep those plugins you really need. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these use resources.
• Many free plugins often come with little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering premium plugins, we recommend that you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we provide here for additional information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two or more years), then think carefully before using it. WordPress changes often and older plugins that have not been updated can create problems.
• Make sure that you always upgrade your plugins to the latest version. Older plugin not only can create conflicts, they may also have security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an integral 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 development costs.

One last thing on the topic of WP plugins:

Whatever functionality you need for your web site, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already created one that will do just what you want, and that this plugin will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the price will be quite affordable.

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

And, if by any chance this WordPress plugin does not exist, then a custom plugin that does exactly what you need it to do can most certainly be developed for your business at a reasonable cost.

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

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