Tag: What Are WordPress Plugins

One of the main features of WordPress is the ability to easily increase your WP site’s functionality using applications called plugins.

What Are Plugins?

Like most of us, you most likely have a device like a mobile phone. What do you do when you want access to something new on your device like a new game or productivity tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a software that is really easy to install and instantly integrates new functionality into any smart device.

(Just as there are social sharing apps …)

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

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

Almost always, adding a new feature to a site involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancements, the cost can be fairly significant, especially if web developers have to create new code or modify programs or develop programs to integrate into your existing set up.

This also applies to setting up a website or business blog. Organizations often fork out money in advance on bells and whistles they may not need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we recommend a modular approach when setting up your web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As the need arises, simply add new applications with a couple of clicks of the mouse that integrate seamlessly with your site, to give your website an entirely new range of useful capabilities, and …

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

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

Benefits Of Using Plugins

Earlier, we compared WordPress plugins with ’apps’. Just like some apps are free to download and some apps cost a little bit of money, so do plugins.

In fact, many wonderful plugins can be downloaded to your site for free.

WP plugins that you purchase are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare these to the price of investing in web development services to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are priced quite low.

Also, since WordPress makes its source code available to everyone, anyone can create, edit and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has enabled many third-party software developers to enhance and contribute to the core software application.

• Plugins let you get started simply with only a simple online business presence and expand when required.
• WordPress plugins let you add almost endless features to your website easily and cheaply.
• WP plugins give you practically unlimited expanding capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow non-technical users to have a site that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your website or blog with new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins offer more extensive features and could require some configuring.

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

Like themes, loads of great plugins are available to WP users … often at no cost!

You can view and download thousands of plugins from the Free WP Plugin Repository …

As mentioned earlier, you can find WordPress plugins that will do just about everything you need done.

There are plugins for:

• User Management
• Content Management
• Web Traffic Generation
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Sharing
• Managing Media Files – Videocasts, Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales And Advertising Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Monitoring & Reporting
• Optimizing Your

For example, you can add features to a business online presence with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your site’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.
• Offline storage management
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell spots on your site
• Set up appointments and appointment reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
• Redirect users from certain pages to other pages on your site or other sites
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Hide specific from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide post content
• Migrate data from non-WordPress platforms
• Search and replace data
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Insert code and code elements into your site’s header and footer
• Add tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search listings
• Add a map of your business location
• Post your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you endless possibilities. If you plan to build a web site for your business, or your existing site was not built using WordPress, then consider getting one built on your domain, or you could be missing out on some serious features.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WordPress plugins are, let’s take a look at some practical advantages of adding a plugin to your site.

For example, if you need to protect your content, you can install plugins to make an area of your page inaccessible, or create a complete membership site with personal login details for every member …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to improve your web presence in lots of different ways. From installing new features that will improve your business, your web users’ experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

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

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your website using relatively inexpensive paid WP plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that integrate and automate features on your pages like displaying customer testimonials and event bookings …

And also set up a complete bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying programmers to build similar functionality for you …

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

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (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, giving your site additional exposure).
• Share your posts with other online users on various social sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online with other customers using forums or even set up an online social network on your own site.
• Engage with your support team via live video chats
• Call your business directly from their smart phones when visiting your pages
• Get help via a dedicated client helpdesk
• And much more …

Finally you, can even integrate complex enterprise-level applications within a WP “front end”. This enables you to control your business sales and marketing, while the third-party application handles the technological areas …

Additional Information About Plugins

• There are loads of good plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can eventually start to affect your site’s performance and site loading speed. It also creates more maintenance work for you resulting from potential errors.
• Install only those plugins that you really need. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these also use server resources.
• Many free plugins often come with little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing paid WP plugins, make sure you check some reviews online and see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check our WP plugin reviews for more expert information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think carefully before installing it. The WordPress application is updated often and older plugins that have not been updated can cause problems.
• Always update your plugins. Outdated plugin not only can create errors and conflicts, they may also contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

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

One last thing regarding WP plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you want for your web site, you can be sure that a plugin probably exists that will do exactly what you need, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that it will be fairly inexpensive.

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

And, if by chance this WordPress plugin does not exist, then a custom plugin that does just what you want it to do can probably be written for you at a reasonable cost.

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

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