Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the main benefits of WordPress is that you can quickly and easily enhance your WP website or blog’s functionality using plugins.

Understanding WP Plugins

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

You download and install an app!

An app is a software application that is easy to install and immediately integrates new functionality into your smart device.

(Just like there are social sharing apps …)

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

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

Typically, if you need to add new features to your website, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancements, the cost can be quite significant, especially if it requires editing code.

This is also applicable when starting a website. Companies tend to pay up front for components they probably will never need.

To save money and keep your costs low, we recommend considering a modular strategy to growing your digital presence presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As more features are required, simply install new software modules with a few clicks of the mouse directly from your administration area, giving your web site a whole new range of possibilities, and …

3) Cost not a single dollar more to download and install on your web site?

Well, that’s precisely what WP plugins allow you to do!

Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

Earlier, we compared plugins with apps. In the same way that many apps are free to download and some cost a little money, so do WordPress plugins.

In fact, thousands of plugins can be installed on your sites.

WP plugins that you purchase are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to get the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are generally quite inexpensive.

Also, because WordPress is an Open Source application, any person can create, edit and customize any part of the WP code. This has enabled many third-party web developers to create more new plugins that enhance WordPress than you can possibly imagine.

• WP plugins let you start off with a basic site and add new features and enhancements to your site only if necessary.
• WordPress plugins allow you to add practically unlimited features to your website easily, quickly and cheaply.
• Plugins give your online presence virtually unlimited expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow ”non-techies” to have a site that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your web site with immediate capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins can be a little more advanced and may require some configuring.

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

Like many themes, loads of plugins are available to WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find plugins that will do just about anything you could possibly want a site to do.

WordPress plugin categories cover:

• Website Management
• Content Distribution
• Increasing Web Visitors
• User Engagement
• Social Monitoring
• Media Management Automation
• Increasing Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Analysis
• Blog SEO

You can expand a WordPress site with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Managing advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce stores with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• 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 Portuguese)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Faster page loading
• Managing events
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your blog
• Set appointments and reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
• Redirect visitors from specific pages to other pages on your site or other sites
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Hide certain from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your posts and pages
• Migrate data from different CMS platforms
• Search and replace content
• Block SPAM
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Insert HTML and script elements into your posts, pages and sidebars
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search listings
• Add location maps
• Publicize your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and others
• Display countdown timers (for special offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

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

In case you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let’s take a look at some practical uses of adding an inexpensive plugin to your website.

For example, if you need to publish content which is only accessible to some but not all users, you can install plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full paid membership site with separate login details for users …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to improve your web site in lots of different ways. From installing new features that will enhance your business, your web users’ experience and your ability to review website metrics …

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

You can also add complex functionality to your website using inexpensive paid WordPress plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that automate functions on your website such as customer feedback and event registrations management …

And also set up a custom bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring web developers to design these functionality for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of native WordPress commenting features and plugins that can make your site even more interactive …

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with additional exposure).
• Bookmark your content on various social sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with your team members through online forums or even set up a private online social network on your own domain.
• Engage with members of your team using live chats
• Dial your business from their cellphones while visiting your site
• Open support tickets
• And much more …

You can even integrate sophisticated “back end” applications using a WP “front end”. This lets you control the content that your visitors see on your web site, while the third-party application handles the technological functions …

Plugins – Useful Tips

• There are many great WordPress plugins available. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this can affect your website’s resources and site loading speed. It also means more maintenance issues for you as a result of potential conflicts and errors.
• Install only those plugins you really need. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these use extra resources.
• Many free plugins normally receive very little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing paid plugins, ensure that you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of our plugin recommendations for more helpful information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think twice before using it. The WordPress core application changes frequently and older plugins that have not been updated can create issues.
• Ensure to always maintain all plugins up-to-date. Outdated plugin not only can cause problems, they may also have vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most used content management system in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand without having to spend thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing on the topic of WordPress plugins:

Whatever functionality you need for your web presence, you can guarantee that a plugin currently exists that will do just what you want it to do, and that it will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a premium plugin, that it will be reasonably inexpensive.

(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 want it to do can certainly be developed for you for a reasonable price.

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can significantly to improve your website. See our related posts to learn more about using WordPress plugins.

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