Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the main advantages of building a website using WordPress is the ability to easily expand your WordPress website’s functionality using plugins.

About Plugins

No doubt, you probably use a cell phone. What happens when you want to access something new on your phone like a new application, game or a business productivity tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a software application that is really easy to install and adds new functionality to your mobile device.

(Just like you will find social sharing apps for mobile devices …)

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

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

Normally, expanding the functionality of an existing site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the feature or enhancement is, things can get quite expensive, particularly if website developers need to create new code or edit code or develop scripts that integrate with your existing set up.

This also applies to creating a new website or business blog. Many businesses tend to fork out money on bells and whistles they probably will never need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we suggest a cost-effective approach to setting up your web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a basic, professional-looking web site up and running fast, then …

2) As you need more features, simply add new applications with a few mouse clicks directly from your WP admin panel, and give your web site an entirely new range of useful capabilities, and also …

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

Well, this is just what a WordPress plugin lets you do!

Benefits Of Using 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 bit of money, so do plugins.

In fact, many plugins are available at no cost to WordPress users.

WP plugins that you have to buy are referred to as “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the price of buying a Premium plugin 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 are priced quite cheaply.

Also, since WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, any web developer can create, modify and customize any portion of the WP code. This has enabled thousands of professional web developers to enhance the WordPresssoftware.

• Plugins let you start off with only a basic yet professional website and then expand only if necessary.
• WordPress plugins let you add almost endless features to any site quickly, easily and quite inexpensively.
• Plugins give you almost unlimited expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical users to own a site that they can manage.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your website or blog with new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins are slightly more complex and may require some initial configuration.

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

Like WordPress themes, loads of great plugins are currently available for WordPress users … often at no cost!

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find WP plugins that will do almost everything you can possibly want your web site to do.

WP plugin categories cover:

• Web Site Management
• Content Distribution
• Increasing Site Traffic
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Engagement
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Monitoring & Reporting
• Blog Security

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

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Managing banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• 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 engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events & bookings
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your site
• Set client appointments and reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Exclude specific from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect page content sections
• Import data from non-WP platforms
• Perform bulk content replacements
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Insert code and code elements into your posts and pages
• Add tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Post your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As you can clearly see, WP plugins give you practically endless possibilities. If you plan to build a website or blog for your business, or your existing web site isn’t built with WordPress, then consider getting a WordPress site or blog in the future, or you could be missing out on some serious features.

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

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

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to improve your business site in lots of different ways. From installing functionality that can enhance your business, your website visitors’ experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

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

You can also add sophisticated features to your website using inexpensive premium WP plugins. For example, you can install plugins that automate processes on your website like managing customer testimonials and booking events …

And even run a complete bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying web developers to code custom applications for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that can allow you to engage better with web visitors, clients and registered site users …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Leave comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with increased exposure).
• Bookmark your content on social networks.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with other users via online forums or even set up an online social network on your own domain.
• Engage with members of your team using live web conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Call your business directly from their smart phones when browsing your site
• Get help and support via a dedicated user helpdesk
• And much more …

You can even integrate complex enterprise solutions using a WP “front end”. This lets you control the content that your visitors see on your site, while the third-party application handles the technological aspects …

Useful Things To Know About Plugins

• There are so many great plugins available. Be careful of overloading your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can affect your website’s performance and site loading times. It also means more maintenance issues for you resulting from possible conflicts.
• Install only those plugins you really need. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these utilize resources.
• Many free plugins often come with little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering paid WP plugins, make sure 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 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 or more years), then think carefully before installing it. The WordPress core application is updated frequently and older plugins that have not been updated can create issues.
• Always upgrade your plugins to their most recent software version. Older plugins not only can cause problems, they may also have security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, WP plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most powerful, flexible and scalable content management system available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add instant features to their web presence without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web development costs.

One last thing regarding plugins:

Whatever functionality you need for your web presence, you can be sure that a someone has probably already developed one that will do just what you need it to do, and that this plugin can either be downloaded for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the cost will be reasonable.

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

And, if by any chance this WP plugin does not exist, then a custom plugin that does exactly what you need it to do can most certainly be created for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of plugins – what plugins are and how they can significantly enhance the functionality of your WordPress website. See our related posts to learn about more great WordPress plugins that we recommend using.

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