Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the main features of the WordPress software is the ability to quickly and easily expand your WordPress web site’s functionality using plugins.

About WP Plugins

Like most people, you most likely have a mobile phone. What happens when you want access to something new on your device like a new software or a new productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

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

(Just as you can find social sharing apps …)

A WordPress plugin is like an app. You install a software that provides new functionality to your WP website or blog …

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

Normally, if you need to add new features to an already-built web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancement, the cost can be significant, particularly if website developers have to add new code or modify programs or develop programs to integrate into your existing set up.

This also applies to developing a new website. Businesses often invest money in advance in additional features they may never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we recommend using a cost-effective strategy to developing your website and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a professional-looking website up and running quickly, then …

2) As you need more features and functionality, add new software modules with only a few mouse clicks directly from within your dashboard area, giving your web site a completely new range of practical features and 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 Plugins

Earlier, we compared WP plugins with ’apps’. In the same way that some apps are free to download and some cost a little bit of money, the same applies to WP plugins.

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

WP plugins that you buy are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of hiring a professional web developer to add the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are generally quite inexpensive.

Also, as WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, anyone can create, modify and customize any part of the WP code. This has enabled thousands of third-party software development companies to enhance and contribute to the WordPresssoftware.

• WordPress plugins allow you to get started with a simple yet professional web presence and then expand only as necessary.
• Plugins allow you to add almost unlimited features to your site quickly, easily and really cheaply.
• WordPress plugins give you virtually unlimited expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical users to own a website that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your site with instant new enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins are a little more complex and may require some configuring.

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

Just like WP themes, thousands of great WP plugins are available for WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find WP plugins that can do just about anything you need done.

Plugin categories cover:

• Web Site Management
• Content Management
• Traffic
• User Engagement
• Social Monitoring
• Adding Media – Video, Graphics & Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales And Marketing Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Analysis Tools
• Optimizing Your WordPress Blog

You can enhance your website with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonial 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
• Business directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your blog
• Set client appointments and reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and send you reports
• Redirect users from missing pages to other pages on your site or other websites
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Hide pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your pages and posts
• Migrate data from different CMS applications
• Perform bulk data edits
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. display Facebook comments)
• Insert HTML and code elements into your website’s header and footer
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced text formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add business location maps
• Distribute your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, WP plugins give you virtually limitless possibilities. If you plan to build a website for your business, or your existing web site was not built using WordPress, then consider getting a WordPress site or blog built on your domain, or you will be missing out on some serious functionality.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let’s take a look at some practical uses of installing an inexpensive plugin on your site.

For example, if you want content protection, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on your post or page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full membership site with customized login details for every member …

As mentioned previously, you can use free plugins to enhance your site in so many different ways. From adding functionality that can improve your business, your site’s user experience and your ability to review website metrics …

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

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your site using inexpensive premium WP plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that integrate and automate tasks on your pages such as customer testimonial and event bookings management …

And even set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to code the same applications for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of native WordPress commenting features and plugins that will increase visitor engagement …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Share your content with other online users on social media.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with your team using online forums or even set up an online social network on your site.
• Engage with members of your team using live web conferencing and chatrooms
• Call your business directly from their cellphones while visiting your site
• Open a support ticket
• And so much more …

You can even integrate sophisticated enterprise-level solutions using a WordPress “front end”. This enables you to control your business marketing, while the third-party application handles the technological aspects …

Some Useful Things To Know About Plugins

• There are loads of plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this will affect your website’s performance and page loading times. It can also mean more maintenance work for you resulting from possible errors.
• Install only the plugins you really use. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these utilize resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing premium WP plugins, we recommend that you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of our plugin reviews for additional helpful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think carefully before using it on your site. The WordPress platform updates frequently and older plugins that have not been updated can cause issues.
• Make sure to always upgrade your plugins. Outdated plugin not only can create issues, they could also contain security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most powerful, flexible and scalable website management solution available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add instant functionality to their website without having to spend thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing regarding WordPress plugins:

Whatever feature you want for your web presence, you can guarantee that a WP plugin currently exists that will do just what you need it to do, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the cost will be reasonable.

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

And, if by any chance such a plugin has not been created yet, then a custom plugin that does exactly what you need it to do can probably be created for you for a reasonable price.

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

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