Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the most useful benefits of WordPress is the ability to quickly and easily increase your WordPress web site’s functionality using inexpensive called ’plugins’.

What Are Plugins?

Like most people, you probably have a smart phone. What happens when you would like 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 little software that is very simple and easy to install and adds new features to any smart device.

(Just like you can find social sharing apps for smart devices …)

A WordPress plugin is similar to an app. You simply install and activate a little piece of software that provides new functionality to your WP web site …

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

Almost always, expanding the functionality of an already-built web site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the feature or enhancement is, things could become quite expensive, particularly if web developers have to create new code or modify templates or install programs that integrate with your current site.

This is also applicable to setting up a website or business blog. Business owners tend to invest money upfront in additional bells and whistles they may probably never need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we recommend considering a sustainable approach to developing your website and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

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

2) As the need arises, install new applications with just a few mouse clicks that integrate with your existing site, to give your site a completely new and expanded range of possibilities, and also …

3) Cost not a single dollar extra to add to your site?

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

Benefits And Advantages Of Using WordPress Plugins

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

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

Plugins that you buy are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the price of hiring a professional web developer to get the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins cost very little.

Also, since WordPress makes its code publicly available, any web developer can create, edit and customize any part of the WordPress code. This has allowed thousands of third-party software development companies to enhance the WPsoftware.

• Plugins let you get started with a simple yet professional website and then expand only as required.
• WP plugins allow you to add practically unlimited functionality to any site easily, quickly and cheaply.
• WordPress plugins give you practically endless expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow anyone 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 give your website immediate enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins offer more extensive options and may need some initial configuring.

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

Like WordPress themes, tens of thousands of plugins are available to WordPress users … often at no cost!

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

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

WordPress plugin categories cover:

• User Administration
• Content Syndication
• Web Traffic Generation
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Connectivity
• Inserting Media Files – Videos, Graphics & Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales Automation
• Increasing Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Reporting
• Securing Your

You can enhance your website with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Surveys
• Managing banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• 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 German)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Cloud storage management
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell spots on your blog
• Set up client appointments and appointment reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
• Redirect URLs
• 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 showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your posts and pages
• Migrate information from other CMS platforms
• Search and replace content
• Fight SPAM
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
• Insert scripts and code elements into your content
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced text formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add business location maps
• Post your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and many others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As it’s clear to see, WP plugins give you limitless business scalability. If you plan to build a website for your business, or your existing site isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider choosing it in the future.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using WordPress plugins, let me show you some practical uses of adding a plugin to your website.

For example, if you need to protect your content, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on your post or page inaccessible, or create a complete membership site with personal login details for all users …

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

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

You can also add advanced features to your website using inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can purchase plugins that automate features on your pages such as displaying customer testimonials and booking events …

And also run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring web developers to create custom applications for you …

You can also take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that will make your site even more interactive …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your site (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, giving your site added exposure).
• Share your posts with other online users on various social sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with other online users through forums or even set up a private community on your site.
• Engage with your support team via live web conferencing and chatrooms
• Call your business directly from their laptops while browsing your pages
• Get help and support via a user support helpdesk
• And much more …

Finally you, can even integrate sophisticated “back end” solutions with a WP “front end”. This allows you to manage the content that your visitors see on your site, while the 3rd-party application handles the technological areas …

Useful Tips About WP Plugins

• There are lots of plugins available. Be careful of overloading your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will affect your site’s performance and page loading speed. It can also mean more maintenance work for you resulting from potential errors.
• Only keep those plugins you really need. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these also consume resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive very little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering premium WP plugins, we recommend that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of our WP plugin recommendations for additional useful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before using it on your site. WordPress is updated regularly and outdated plugins can create issues.
• Always upgrade your plugins to their latest version. Older plugin not only can cause conflicts, they could also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, plugins are an important feature of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most popular content management tool available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand quickly without spending thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing on the subject of WP plugins:

If there is any feature you want for your web site, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already authored one that will do exactly what you want it to do, and that this plugin will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the price will be surprisingly affordable.

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

And, if by any chance such a plugin is not available, then a custom plugin that does precisely what you would like it to do can most certainly be written for you at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can help expand your WordPress site. See our related posts to learn more about using WordPress plugins.

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