Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the main advantages of using WordPress is the ability to quickly enhance your WP web site’s functionality using plugins.

What Are Plugins?

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

You download and install an app!

An app is a little software that is easy to install and adds new functionality to your smart phone.

(Just like you will find social sharing apps …)

A plugin is very much like an app. You simply download and install a software application that adds new functionality to your web site …

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

Normally, adding a new feature to an already-built website involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the features or enhancements are, things could get quite expensive, especially if web developers have to create new code or edit code or install scripts to integrate into your existing site.

This also applies when setting up a website. Companies tend to invest in additional features and customizations they may never need.

For this reason, we suggest a sustainable strategy to developing your website and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As the need for new features or functionality arises, install new software modules with just a few clicks of the mouse directly from your WP admin area, and give your web site a whole new range of practical functionality, and …

3) Cost not a single cent extra to add to your website?

Well, this is precisely what plugins allow you to do!

Benefits And Advantages Of Using Plugins

We started this blog post by comparing plugins with ’apps’. In the same way that some apps are free to download and some apps cost a little money, the same applies to WordPress plugins.

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

WordPress plugins that you buy are referred to as ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to add similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins cost very little.

Also, since WordPress makes its code available to everyone, anybody can create, rewrite and customize any portion of the code. This has allowed thousands of professional software development professionals to create more new tools that “plug into” the WordPress application than you can possibly imagine.

• WordPress plugins allow you to get started with a simple yet professional web presence and then expand as required.
• Plugins allow you to add practically unlimited features to your web presence easily and quite inexpensively.
• Plugins give you almost unlimited expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow ”non-techies” to own a web presence that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your web site with instant new enhancements and features.
• Some plugins are slightly more complex and require some configuring.

WordPress Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Many Of Them Are) 100% FREE!

Like many themes, thousands of WordPress plugins are currently available for WP users … for FREE!

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find plugins that can do almost anything you want done.

There are WordPress plugins for:

• User Management
• Content Syndication
• Driving Site Traffic
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Connectivity
• Adding Media – Video, Graphics & Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Reporting Applications
• Optimizing Your

You can enhance your business online presence with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Managing banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonial forms
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your website from English to Spanish)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Cloud storage management
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell spots on your website
• Set client appointments and reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect website pages
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Hide pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect page content sections
• Migrate data from non-WP platforms
• Perform bulk content edits
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. display Facebook comments)
• Insert HTML and script elements into your content
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add a map
• Post your content automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As it’s clear to see, WordPress plugins give you practically endless possibilities. If you plan to build a website or blog for your business, or your existing site isn’t built with WordPress, then consider choosing WordPress in the future.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let me show you how you can benefit by simply adding a plugin to your site.

For example, if you need to publish content which is only accessible to some users, you can install plugins to make a section of your page inaccessible, or create a complete membership site with personal login details for all users …

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

To extending your business visibility across a number of social networks and search engines …

You can also add complex functionality to your website using relatively inexpensive premium WordPress plugins. For example, you can download plugins that integrate and automate functionality on your website such as user testimonial and event bookings management …

And also run a complete bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying programmers to design custom applications for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that will allow you to engage better with visitors, customers and registered site members …

For example, your visitors can:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with additional exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on social networking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with your team through online forums or even set up a private community on your own site.
• Engage with your team using live chats
• Dial your business from their laptops while visiting your site
• Open support tickets
• And much more …

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

Plugins – Some Useful Tips

• There are lots of plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can affect your website’s resources and page loading times. It can also mean more maintenance issues for you as a result of potential conflicts.
• Install only the plugins that you really plan to use. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these use extra server resources.
• Many free plugins often receive little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing premium WP plugins, ensure that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we publish on this site for additional useful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think twice before using it. The WordPress core software is updated frequently and outdated plugins can cause problems.
• Ensure that you always upgrade your plugins to the latest version. Older plugin not only can create errors, they could also contain vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an important component of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most downloaded content management system available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand without having to spend thousands of dollars on web development costs.

One last thing regarding plugins:

Whatever functionality you need for your website, you can be sure that a WP plugin already exists that will do just what you want it to do, and that this plugin will either be available 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 this plugin is not available, then one can most certainly be coded for you at a reasonable cost.

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

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