Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the main advantages of building a website with the WordPress platform is the ability to quickly increase your WP website or blog’s functionality using plugins.

Understanding WP Plugins

Like most people, you probably own a smart phone. What happens when you want access to something new on your phone like a new software or a new tool?

You download and install an app!

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

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

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

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

Normally, if you plan to add a new feature to your site, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, this cost can be significant, particularly if website developers need to add new code or edit templates or install scripts that integrate with your existing site.

This is also applicable to starting a website or business blog. Companies tend to invest up front in features they probably will never need.

To keep your expenses to a minimum, we recommend using a cost-effective strategy when growing your web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As new features or functionality are needed, add new software modules with only a couple of clicks of the mouse that integrate seamlessly with your existing website or blog, to give your website a completely new range of possibilities, and also …

3) Cost not a single dollar extra to install on your web site?

Well, that’s precisely what plugins let you do!

Benefits And Advantages Of Using WP Plugins

Earlier, we compared plugins with apps. Just like some apps are free to download and some cost a little bit of money, the same is true of WP plugins.

In fact, many plugins can be downloaded to your website at no cost.

Plugins that cost money are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to add 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, edit and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has allowed many third-party software developers to enhance and contribute to the WPsoftware.

• Plugins let you start off simply with only a basic yet professional site and then add new features and enhancements to your site as required.
• Plugins allow you to add practically endless features to any website easily, quickly and really cheaply.
• WP plugins give you virtually endless expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical users to have a site that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your website with new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins can be a little more complex and may need some configuring.

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

Just like themes, thousands of WordPress plugins are currently available for WordPress users … often at no cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you can find WordPress plugins that will do just about anything you want done.

Plugin categories cover:

• User Administration
• Content Management
• Traffic
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Engagement
• Inserting Media – Videos, Graphics & Images, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Analysis
• WordPress Optimization

For example, you can enhance your website with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Surveys
• Managing banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User feedback forms
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your pages from English to French)
• 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 integration
• Faster page loading
• Managing events & bookings
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your website
• Set up appointments and appointment reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and send you reports
• Redirect users from old pages to other areas on your site or other websites
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Hide pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide post content sections
• Import content from non-WordPress applications
• Perform bulk data replacements
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Inserting HTML and script elements into your posts
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map of your business location
• Post your content automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and many others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As it’s clear to see, WP plugins give you virtually endless possibilities. If you are planning to build a web site, or your existing web site wasn’t built with WordPress, then consider choosing it in the future.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WP plugins are, let’s take a look at some practical advantages of adding an inexpensive plugin to your website.

For example, if you want to publish private content, you can install plugins to make an area of your post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a professional paid membership site with separate login details for users …

As mentioned previously, you can use free plugins to enhance your business site in so many ways. From adding new features that enhance your business, your visitors’ experience and your ability to analyze visitor metrics …

To extending your business visibility across social sites and search engines …

You can also add advanced features to your website using inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that integrate and automate functionality on your site like customer feedback and event bookings management …

And even run a complete bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring 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 your visitors, clients and registered site members …

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on social networks.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with your support staff through online forums or even set up a private community on your site.
• Engage with your staff using live video chats
• Call your business from their devices while visiting your site
• Get support via a dedicated customer helpdesk
• And much more …

Finally you, can also integrate sophisticated enterprise-level solutions using a WP “front end”. This lets you manage the content that your visitors see on your site, while the 3rd-party application handles the technical side of things …

WP Plugins – Additional Information

• There are so many plugins available. Be careful of overloading your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can begin to affect your website’s resources and site loading times. It can also mean more maintenance work for you resulting from potential errors.
• Install only those plugins you really need to use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use resources.
• Many free plugins normally come with little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing premium plugins, ensure that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the plugin 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 information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think carefully before installing it on your site. The WordPress software changes on a frequent basis and out-of-date plugins can create issues.
• Ensure that you always update your plugins to the latest version. Outdated plugin not only can cause conflicts, they may also contain security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

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

One last thing about WP plugins:

Whatever functionality you need for your website, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already authored one that will do exactly what you want, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that it will be reasonably affordable.

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

And, if by chance such a plugin has not been created yet, then it can most certainly be developed for your business at a reasonable cost.

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

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