Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the main advantages of choosing WordPress is that you can easily increase your WP web site’s functionality using plugins.

What Are WP Plugins?

No doubt, you most likely own a cell phone. What happens when you would like to access something new on your device like a new game or a new productivity tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a software application that is simple and easy to install and integrates new features and functionality into any smart device.

(Just like there are social sharing apps for mobile phones …)

A WordPress plugin is similar to an app. You install and activate a software application that adds new functionality to your WP site …

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

Typically, adding a new feature to an existing site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new feature or enhancement is, things could become quite expensive, particularly if website developers need to add new code or edit programs or develop programs to integrate into your current site.

This also applies to creating a website. Organizations tend to fork out money in advance on additional components they probably will never need.

To save money and keep expenses down, we recommend a sustainable approach when setting up your website and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine if you could:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a professional web presence up and running fast, then …

2) As the need for new features and functionality becomes evident, add new applications with just a couple of mouse clicks directly from within your dashboard section, to give your site an entirely new and expanded range of features and functionality, and also …

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

Well, this is exactly what WP plugins allow you to do!

Plugins – Benefits

We began this blog post by comparing plugins with ’apps’. In a similar way that many apps are free to download and some cost a little bit of money, so do plugins.

In fact, loads of wonderful plugins can be downloaded to your website for free.

WP plugins that cost money are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the cost of a Premium WordPress plugin to the price of investing in web development services to add the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are generally very inexpensive.

Also, because WordPress makes its source code publicly available, anybody can create, rewrite and customize any part of the code. This has allowed many third-party web development companies to enhance and contribute to the core WordPress software application.

• WordPress plugins let you start off with a simple web site and then expand as necessary.
• WP plugins allow you to add practically unlimited functionality to your web site easily and very cheaply.
• Plugins give your website almost endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow anyone to have a site that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your website or blog new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins offer more extensive features and could require some configuration.

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

Like many themes, loads of great WordPress plugins are available for WordPress users … and many of these great plugins are 100% FREE!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find plugins that can do almost anything you need done.

WP plugin categories cover:

• Web Site Administration
• Content Syndication
• Traffic
• User Interactivity
• Social Engagement
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Reporting Tools
• Site SEO

For example, you can enhance a website with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Surveys
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Instant language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your site’s content from English to Norwegian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Faster page loading
• Managing events & bookings
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your website
• Set client appointments and appointment reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Hide specific from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your pages and posts
• Migrate information from different CMS applications
• Perform bulk data edits
• Block SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
• Inserting HTML and code elements into your pages
• 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 sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and many others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, WordPress plugins give you limitless business flexibility. If you are planning to build a web site, or your existing site wasn’t built with WordPress, then consider getting one added to your domain, or you could be missing out on some serious features.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let me show you some practical advantages of installing an inexpensive plugin on your website.

For example, if you need to publish private content, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a page or post inaccessible, or create a full membership site with customized login details for each member …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to improve your site in so many ways. From adding new features that enhance your business, your visitors’ experience and your ability to review visitor data …

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

You can also add complex features to your website using relatively inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can download plugins that integrate and automate features on your pages like managing customer testimonials and booking events …

And even set up a complete bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying programmers to create these functionality for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that will let you engage better with your web visitors, clients and registered site users …

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 your visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site added exposure).
• Share your posts with other web users on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with your team via online forums or even set up an online social network on your site.
• Engage with your staff via live chats
• Call your business from their cellphones when visiting your pages
• Open a support ticket
• And so much more …

Finally you, can also integrate sophisticated enterprise-level applications with a WordPress “front end”. This allows you to control the content that your visitors will see on your web site, while the third-party application handles the technical functions …

Plugins – Useful Information

• There are so many amazing plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your server with too many plugins, as this can affect your website’s performance and page loading speed. It can also create more maintenance issues for you as a consequence of potential errors.
• Install only the plugins that you really need to use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these utilize additional resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering paid plugins, ensure that you check around a little and see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check our plugin reviews for additional helpful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think twice before installing it. WordPress updates frequently and older plugins that have not been updated can cause problems.
• Make sure that you always update your plugins to their most recent software version. Older plugins not only can cause errors, they may also contain vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an important element of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most used digital content management tool in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand quickly without having to spend thousands of dollars on web developers.

One last thing on the topic of plugins:

Whatever feature you want for your website, you can be sure that a WP plugin probably exists that will do what you need, and that it will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the price will be reasonable.

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

And, if by any chance such a WP plugin is not available, then one can probably be created for your business at a reasonable cost.

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

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