Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the most powerful benefits of the WordPress web content management software is that you can quickly increase your WP web site’s functionality using plugins.

What Are Plugins?

Like most of us, you probably have a cell phone. What happens when you want to access something new on your phone like a new application, game or a new productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a piece of software that is really easy to install and adds new functionality to any mobile phone.

(Just as there are social sharing apps for smart devices …)

A WP plugin is similar to an app. You simply install a little piece of software that provides new functionality to your website …

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

Generally, if you need to expand the functionality of an already-built site, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, this could become fairly expensive, especially if it involves website development.

This also applies when starting a new web site. Companies often fork out money on features or customizations they probably will never need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we recommend a sustainable strategy to growing your online presence presence and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply with minimal cost involved. Get a website up and running fast, then …

2) As you need new features and functionality, install new software modules with a couple of clicks of the mouse directly from your dashboard area, giving your website or blog an entirely new range of features and functionality, and also …

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

Well, that’s exactly what plugins allow you to do!

WordPress Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

Earlier, we compared plugins with mobile apps. In the same way that many apps are free to download and some cost a little money, the same is true of plugins.

In fact, many wonderful plugins are available at no cost to users.

WordPress plugins that you buy are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of investing in web development services to get the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are typically quite inexpensive.

Also, as WordPress is an Open Source application, any web developer can create, modify and customize any portion of the code. This has enabled many third-party web developers to enhance and contribute to the core WP software application.

• WP plugins let you get started with a basic web presence and expand when required.
• Plugins let you add almost unlimited functionality to your web site easily, quickly and quite inexpensively.
• Plugins give your site almost endless expanding capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow non-technical users to have a digital presence that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your website or blog with instant new capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more advanced options and may need some configuring.

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

Just like themes, thousands of great plugins are made available for WordPress users … and many of these great plugins are 100% FREE!

You can download thousands of plugins from the Free WordPress Plugin Repository …

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

Plugin categories cover:

• User Management
• Content Management
• Driving Web Visitors
• User Interactivity
• Social Sharing
• Managing Media – Video, Graphics, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales Automation
• Improving Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Reporting
• Web Site Optimization

For example, you can expand your business online presence with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from managing single ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to Italian)
• 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
• Managing events
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your website
• Set up client appointments and reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect website pages
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude specific from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your posts and pages
• Import data from non-WP platforms
• Perform bulk content replacements
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. display Facebook comments)
• Inserting code and script elements into your posts
• Add and format 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 sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and others
• Show countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, WordPress plugins give you limitless possibilities. If you plan to build a website or blog, or your existing web site was not built with WordPress, then consider getting a WordPress site or blog in the future, or you will be missing out on some serious functionality.

In case you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using WP plugins, let me show you some practical uses of installing an inexpensive plugin on your web site.

For example, if you want to publish private content, you can use plugins to make an area of a page or post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full paid membership site with customized login details for each user …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to improve your web site in so many ways. From adding functionality that enhance your business, your web users’ experience and your ability to analyze site metrics …

To increasing your business reach and visibility across social sites and search engines …

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

And even run a complete bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying programmers to build these applications for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that can make your site even more interactive …

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Share your content with other online users on social networks.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with your support team using forums or even set up a private social network on your site.
• Engage with your staff using live chats
• Call your business directly from their mobile phones when browsing your site
• Get help and support via a dedicated customer help desk
• And much more …

Finally you, can even integrate complex 3rd-party solutions using a WordPress “front end”. This allows you to control the content that your visitors will see on your site, while your third-party application handles the technical aspects …

Some Useful Things You Should Know About Plugins

• There are loads of great WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with too many plugins, as this will eventually begin to affect your website’s performance and site loading speed. It also creates more maintenance work for you as a consequence of potential conflicts and errors.
• Install only the plugins that you really need to use. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these use server resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering premium WordPress plugins, we recommend that you check some reviews online and see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check our WP plugin reviews for more information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think carefully before using it. WordPress is updated frequently and out-of-date WP plugins can create problems.
• Always update your plugins to the latest software version. Outdated plugins not only can cause issues, they could also have 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 downloaded website management software available. 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 plugins:

Whatever feature you want for your web site, you can guarantee that a plugin already exists that will do exactly what you need, and that this plugin can either be downloaded for FREE, or if it’s a premium plugin, that it will be reasonably inexpensive.

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

And, if by chance this WordPress plugin is not available, then it can most certainly be developed for you for a reasonable price.

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can help enhance the functionality of your website. See our related posts to learn more about using WP plugins.

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