Tag: What Is A Plugin

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

What Are WordPress Plugins?

No doubt, you probably have a device like a smart phone. What do you do when you want access to something new on your phone like a new application, game or a business tool?

You download and install an app!

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

(Just like you can find social sharing apps …)

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

(… there are also social sharing plugins for WP sites!)

Normally, expanding the functionality of your website involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the new feature or enhancements, the cost can be significant, especially if website developers have to create new code or edit templates or install programs that integrate into your current site.

This is also applicable to developing a website or business blog. Businesses tend to spend money for components they may probably never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we suggest using a sustainable strategy when growing your web site and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As the need for new features and functionality becomes apparent, add new software modules with just a few clicks of the mouse directly from within your admin area, to give your web site a whole new range of features and functionality, and also …

3) Cost not a single cent more to install on your site?

Well, that’s just what a WP plugin enables you to do!

Benefits & Advantages Of WP Plugins

I started this article by comparing plugins with mobile apps. Just like some apps are free to download and some cost a little money, the same is true for plugins.

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

Plugins that you have to pay for are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the cost of buying a Premium WP plugin to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to add the same functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are priced quite cheaply.

Also, as WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, any person can create, modify and customize any part of the code. This has enabled many professional web developers to enhance and contribute to the WPsoftware.

• WP plugins allow you to get started with a simple site and then add new features and enhancements to your site if necessary.
• Plugins let you add practically unlimited functionality to any website easily, quickly and quite inexpensively.
• Plugins give you almost endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow ”non-techies” to have a site that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your website with immediate capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins can be a little more complex and may require some configuration.

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

Like many WordPress themes, loads of great WordPress plugins are currently available for WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you can find plugins that can do just about anything you need a site to do.

There are plugins for:

• Site Management
• Content Distribution
• Web Traffic Generation
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Media
• Managing Media Files – Videos, Images, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales And Marketing Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Reporting Applications
• Web Site SEO

You can expand a business online presence with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Automatic language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to Portuguese)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your blog
• Set client appointments and appointment reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and send 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 displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide post content sections
• Import data from other publishing applications
• Perform bulk data edits
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Inserting HTML and code elements into your posts
• Add tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced text formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search listings
• Add a map of your business location
• Post your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and many others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, WordPress plugins give you virtually endless business scalability. If you are currently planning to build a website, or your existing web site isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider using it in the future.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let me show you some practical advantages of installing a plugin on your site.

For example, if you need content protection, you can install plugins to make an area of a page or post inaccessible, or create a professional paid membership site with separate login details for each user …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to enhance your website in lots of ways. From adding functionality that will improve your business, your site’s user experience and your ability to analyze site data …

To increasing your site’s reach across multiple social sites and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your site using relatively inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can install plugins that integrate and automate tasks on your website like managing customer testimonials and booking events …

And also set up a custom bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying software developers to create the same applications for you …

You can also take advantage of native WordPress commenting features and plugins that will enhance your site’s interactivity …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with additional exposure).
• Share your posts with other web users on social networking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online with your support staff through online forums or even set up an online community on your own domain.
• Engage with your staff via live chats
• Dial your business from their mobile phones when browsing your website
• Open a support ticket
• And much more …

Finally you, can also integrate complex enterprise applications within a WordPress “front end”. This allows you to manage the content that your visitors see on your website, while the third-party application handles the technological functions …

Plugins – Additional Things To Know

• There are so many great WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will start to affect your website’s performance and page loading times. It can also create more maintenance work for you resulting from potential errors.
• Only keep those plugins that you really need. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these utilize extra server resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with very little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing paid plugins, make sure you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check our WP plugin reviews for additional information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think twice before using it on your site. The WordPress application updates often and older plugins that have not been updated can cause conflicts.
• Always keep your plugins updated. Outdated plugin not only can create problems, they may also have vulnerabilities that could 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 downloaded content management system available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add instant features to their website without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web development costs.

One last thing regarding plugins:

Whatever feature you want for your web presence, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already created one that will do exactly what you want, and that this plugin will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be fairly inexpensive.

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

And, if by any chance such a WordPress plugin is not available, then a custom plugin that does precisely what you need it to do can most certainly be coded for your business for a very reasonable price.

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of plugins – what plugins are and how they can enhance the functionality of your WordPress web site. See our published posts to learn about more popular WordPress plugins that we recommend using.

***

***