Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the main advantages of choosing the WordPress web content publishing platform is the ability to easily enhance your WordPress site’s functionality using plugins.

Understanding Plugins

No doubt, you probably own a device like a mobile phone. What happens when you want access to something new on your phone like a new game or a new business tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a piece of software that is very easy to install and immediately adds new functionality to any mobile device.

(Just as you can find social sharing apps for mobile phones …)

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

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

Typically, adding a new feature to an existing web site involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the new features or enhancement, this cost can be fairly significant, particularly if website developers need to add new code or edit code or develop programs that integrate into your existing site.

This is also applicable when developing a new website. Businesses tend to invest in additional bells and whistles they probably will never need.

To save money and keep costs low, we recommend a cost-effective strategy to growing your website and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply with minimal cost involved. Get your business web presence up and running quickly, then …

2) As you need new features, add new applications with a few clicks of the mouse that integrate with your current website or blog, giving your website or blog an entirely new range of practical features and capabilities, and …

3) Cost not a single cent extra to download and install on your web site?

Well, that’s precisely what a plugin lets you do!

Plugins – Benefits & Advantages

I started this article by comparing plugins with apps. In a similar way that many apps are free to download and some may cost a little money, so do plugins.

In fact, many plugins are freely available for WordPress users.

WordPress plugins that you have to buy are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the price of investing in web development services to add similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins cost very little.

Also, because WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, any person can create, rewrite and customize any part of the WP code. This has enabled many third-party web development companies to enhance the core software application.

• WP plugins allow you to start off simply with just a basic website and expand when necessary.
• WP plugins let you add almost endless functionality to your website easily, quickly and quite inexpensively.
• WP plugins give you practically unlimited expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical users to own a site that they can manage.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your site with new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins offer more extensive options and could require some configuring.

Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Many Are) 100% FREE!

Like themes, tens of thousands of great WP plugins are made available to WordPress users … for FREE!

You can view and download thousands of plugins from the Free WP Plugin Repository …

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

There are WordPress plugins for:

• Site Administration
• Content Distribution
• Traffic
• User Engagement
• Social Monitoring
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting
• Site Optimization

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

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Surveys
• Rotating advertising banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User feedback forms
• Language translation plugins (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 interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your website
• Set client appointments and reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect visitors from old pages to other areas on your site or other sites
• 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 showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect post content
• Migrate content from non-WordPress platforms
• Perform bulk content edits
• Fight SPAM
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
• Inserting scripts and code elements into your posts
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Post your content automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and many others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you practically limitless business flexibility. If you plan to build a web site, or your existing website isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider choosing it in the future.

In case you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using WordPress plugins, let me show you how you can benefit by simply adding a plugin to your site.

For example, if you need content protection, you can install plugins to make an area of your page or post inaccessible, or create a complete membership site with personal login details for each member …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to enhance your site in lots of different ways. From adding features that can enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your ability to analyze website metrics …

To increasing your site’s reach and visibility across social media and search engines …

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

And even set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying programmers to code similar functionality for you …

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

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site increased exposure).
• Share your posts with other online users on social networks.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with your team members through online forums or even set up a private community on your site.
• Engage with your team via live web conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Call your business from their devices when visiting your site
• Open a support ticket
• And so much more …

Finally you, can also integrate complex “back end” solutions using 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 technological aspects …

Additional Information About Plugins

• There are lots of great plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your server with too many plugins, as this can inevitably affect your site’s performance and site loading times. It also means more maintenance issues for you resulting from possible conflicts and errors.
• Install only those plugins that you really need. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these use server resources.
• Many free plugins often come with little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing paid plugins, we recommend that you check around a little and see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we publish on this site for additional useful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before using it on your site. The WordPress core software changes often and older plugins that have not been updated can cause conflicts.
• Always maintain your plugins up-to-date. Older plugin not only can create problems, they may also have 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 WordPress the most used CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new functionality to their web presence without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing on the topic of WordPress plugins:

Whatever functionality you need for your website, you can be sure that a plugin currently exists that will do what you need, and that it can either be downloaded at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the cost will be minimal.

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

And, if by any chance such a WordPress plugin does not exist, then a custom plugin that does exactly what you want it to do can probably be coded for you for a very reasonable price.

Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can help enhance the functionality of your business blog. See our published posts to learn more about usingplugins.

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