Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the main features of WordPress is the ability to quickly increase your WP website’s functionality using plugins.

Understanding WP Plugins

No doubt, you probably own a mobile phone. What do you do when you would like access to something new on your phone like a new game or business productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is simple and easy to install and immediately adds new features to your mobile device.

(Just as you will find social sharing apps …)

A WP plugin is really similar to an app. You install a software application that provides new functionality to your WordPress web site …

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

Generally, if you need to expand the functionality of your website, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancement, this cost can be quite significant, especially if it involves website development.

This is also applicable when developing a new website or business blog. Businesses sometimes invest money upfront in additional features or options they probably will never need.

To save money and keep your costs low, we recommend a modular approach to growing a website and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply and with minimal expense involved. Get your business web presence up and running quickly, then …

2) As the need for new capabilities or functionality arises, install new software modules with just a couple of mouse clicks that integrate seamlessly with your current website, giving your website a whole new range of possibilities, and …

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

Well, that’s just what a WordPress plugin allows you to do!

Benefits & Advantages Of Plugins

I started this post by comparing plugins with smartphone apps. In the same way that some apps are free to download and some cost a little bit of money, the same applies with plugins.

In fact, many plugins can be downloaded to your site at no cost.

WP plugins that you purchase are referred to as “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare these to the cost of paying for professional web development services to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins cost very little.

Also, because WordPress makes its source code publicly available, any person can create, modify and customize any part of the WP code. This has enabled thousands of third-party web developers to create more applications that work seamlessly with WordPress than you can imagine.

• WP plugins let you start off with a simple website and then expand only as required.
• WP plugins allow you to add practically endless functionality to your web site quickly, easily and inexpensively.
• Plugins give your online business presence almost unlimited expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow business owners to own a website 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 site with instant new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more advanced features and may need some configuring.

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

Just like themes, tens of thousands of great WP plugins are available to WordPress users … often at no cost!

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

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

Plugin categories cover:

• Site Administration
• Content Syndication
• Web Traffic Generation
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Engagement
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Reporting
• Optimizing Your WordPress Web Site

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

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Display ad banners
• E-commerce (from managing single ordering with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce stores with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content 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.
• Media integration
• Faster page loading
• Managing events
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your site
• Set appointments and reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect web links
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude certain from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your posts and pages
• Import information from non-WP applications
• Perform bulk content replacements
• Fight SPAM
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. display Facebook comments)
• Insert scripts and code elements into your content
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add a map
• Publish your content automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and many others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

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 wasn’t built using WordPress, then consider choosing WordPress in the future.

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

For example, if you need content protection, you can install plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on your post or page inaccessible, or create a professional membership site with customized login details for users …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to improve your web presence in so many different ways. From installing functionality that will enhance your business, your web users’ experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

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

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

And even run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying web developers to build similar applications for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that will let you engage more with web visitors, customers and registered site users …

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on social networking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with your team via forums or even set up a private online community on your domain.
• Engage with your support staff via live chats
• Call your business from their devices when browsing your website
• Open support tickets
• And so much more …

Finally you, can also integrate complex enterprise solutions within a WordPress “front end”. This lets you control your business marketing, while your 3rd-party application handles the technological side of things …

WP Plugins – Additional Information

• There are lots of WordPress plugins available. Be careful of overloading your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can affect your site’s performance and site loading speed. It also means more maintenance work for you resulting from potential conflicts and errors.
• Install only the plugins that you really need to use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use additional resources.
• Many free plugins often come with very little to no support from the plugin author. When considering premium plugins, we recommend that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we provide on this site for additional useful 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 using it. The WordPress software is updated often and outdated plugins can create errors.
• Make sure to always upgrade your plugins to the most recent software version. Older plugin not only can cause errors, they could also contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most preferred online management software available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web development costs.

One last thing about WP plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you need for your website, you can be sure that a someone has probably already authored one that will do exactly what you want, and that this plugin can either be downloaded at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that it will be surprisingly inexpensive.

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

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

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

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