Tag: What Are WordPress Plugins

One of the main features of WordPress is that you can quickly increase your WordPress website’s functionality using plugins.

What Are Plugins?

Like most of us, you most likely own a device like a smart phone. What happens when you would like to access something new on your device like a new application, software or a business tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a software application that is easy to install and immediately adds new features to any mobile device.

(Just as there are social sharing apps …)

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

(… you can also find social sharing plugins for WP sites!)

Generally, if you need to expand the functionality of an already-built web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancement, this could become fairly expensive, especially if website developers have to create new code or modify templates or develop scripts that integrate into your existing site.

This is also applicable to setting up a new web site. Many business owners sometimes spend money in advance on extra components they probably will never need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we suggest a sustainable strategy when developing your web site and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As you need new features and functionality, you can add new applications with just a few clicks of the mouse directly from your WP dashboard panel, to give your website a whole new range of practical capabilities, and also …

3) Cost not a single dollar extra to install on your web site?

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

WP Plugins – Benefits & Advantages

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

In fact, loads of great plugins can be downloaded to your site for free.

Plugins that you have to pay for are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of hiring a professional web developer to get similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are priced quite low.

Also, because WordPress makes its source code available to everyone, any person can create, rewrite and customize any portion of the code. This has allowed many third-party software developers to build more new applications that work seamlessly with the WordPress platform than you can possibly imagine.

• WordPress plugins let you start off with a basic web site and then expand when necessary.
• Plugins allow you to add practically endless functionality to your web site easily and inexpensively.
• WordPress plugins give your digital presence virtually endless expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow business owners to own a site that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your site new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins are slightly more advanced and may need some configuration.

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

Like many themes, thousands of plugins are made available to WP users … often at no cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find plugins that will do just about anything you need done.

There are plugins for:

• Website Management
• Content Management
• Online Traffic Generation
• User Engagement
• Social Sharing
• Managing Media – Videocasts, Graphics & Images, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales Automation
• Increasing Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Monitoring & Reporting Applications
• Optimizing Your

You can add features to a business online presence with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Surveys
• Managing ad banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonial forms
• Instant language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to Spanish)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your blog
• Set up client appointments and appointment reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect affiliate pages
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide page content
• Migrate content from non-WordPress applications
• Search and replace content
• Block SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor discussions (e.g. display Facebook posts)
• Insert HTML and code elements into your posts, pages and sidebars
• Add formatted tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add a map
• Syndicate your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and others
• Show countdown timers (for special offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you virtually limitless business scalability. If you are currently planning to build a website for your business, or your existing website was not built with WordPress, then consider getting one in the future, or you could be missing out on some serious functionality.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WordPress plugins are, let’s take a look at how you can benefit instantly by installing a plugin on your site.

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

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to enhance your web site in so many different ways. From installing features that enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your ability to analyze site data …

To increasing your site’s reach and visibility across social media and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your site using relatively inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can purchase plugins that automate features on your pages such as displaying customer testimonials and event registration details …

And also run a custom bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying software developers to design the same functionality for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that can increase user engagement …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with increased exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on various social sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with other customers through online forums or even set up a private social network on your own domain.
• Engage with members of your team via live chats
• Dial your business directly from their laptops when visiting your pages
• Get help and support via a user support helpdesk
• And so much more …

You can even integrate complex 3rd-party applications within a WordPress “front end”. This enables you to manage your business sales and marketing, while your 3rd-party application handles the technical areas …

WordPress Plugins – Some Useful Information

• There are loads of plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can begin to affect your site’s performance and site loading times. It also means more maintenance issues for you resulting from possible conflicts and errors.
• Install only those plugins you really use. Delete any plugins from your site, as these also consume server resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive very little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing paid WordPress plugins, make sure you check some reviews online and understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check our plugin reviews for additional information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before installing it on your website. The WordPress application changes regularly and older plugins that have not been updated can cause conflicts.
• Always maintain all plugins up-to-date. Outdated plugins not only can create errors and conflicts, they may also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WP plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most preferred CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new functionality to their website without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing about plugins:

If there is any feature or functionality you need for your web site, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already authored one that will do exactly what you want, and that it can either be downloaded at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be surprisingly affordable.

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

And, if by any chance such a WordPress plugin does not exist, then it can most certainly be written for you for a very reasonable price.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can significantly expand your business blog. See our published posts to learn about more great plugins that we recommend using.

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