Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the most powerful benefits of building a website with the WordPress website management platform is that you can quickly increase your WP website or blog’s functionality using applications called ’plugins’.

What Are Plugins?

No doubt, you probably own a device like a smart phone. What happens when you would like access to something new on your phone like a new application, software or a new business tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

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

(Just like you can find social sharing apps for smart phones …)

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

(… there are also social sharing plugins for WordPress users!)

Generally, adding a new feature to an existing site involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancements, this cost can be significant, especially if it requires modifying code.

This also applies when developing a new web site. Business owners tend to invest in added features and customizations they may probably never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we recommend a cost-effective strategy to developing a website and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As you need more features, install new applications with a couple of clicks of the mouse directly from your WordPress dashboard section, giving your site an entirely new range of useful functionality, and also …

3) Cost not one dollar extra to download and install on your website?

Well, this is precisely what plugins let you do!

Benefits And Advantages Of Plugins

We started this post by comparing WordPress plugins with ’apps’. In the same way that many apps are free to download and some may cost a little money, the same is true of WP plugins.

In fact, loads of fantastic plugins can be installed and activated on your sites.

WP plugins that cost money are referred to as ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of investing in professional web development services to add the same functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. ”paid”) plugins are priced quite cheaply.

Also, since WordPress is an Open Source application, any person can create, rewrite and customize any part of the WP code. This has enabled thousands of professional web development companies to build more applications that enhance WordPress than you can probably imagine.

• Plugins let you get started with a basic website and expand only when necessary.
• WP plugins let you add practically endless functionality to any online business presence quickly and inexpensively.
• WordPress plugins give your online business presence practically unlimited expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow non-technical website owners to own a website that they can manage.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your site with instant new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more advanced features and require some initial configuring.

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

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

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

As mentioned earlier, you can find plugins that can do just about anything you can imagine.

There are WP plugins for:

• Site Management
• Content Distribution
• Traffic
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Connectivity
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Monitoring & Reporting
• Optimizing Your WordPress Blog

You can add features to a website with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Display banners
• E-commerce (from managing single sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Instant language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your website 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 management
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell spots on your website
• Set up client appointments and reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and send you reports
• Redirect visitors from old pages to other pages on your site or other websites
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Hide specific from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your pages and posts
• Migrate content from different CMS platforms
• Search and replace content
• Block SPAM commenting
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
• Inserting HTML and script elements into your content
• Add tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Publicize your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and many others
• Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

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

In case you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using WordPress plugins, let’s take a look at how you can benefit by simply installing a plugin on your site.

For example, if you want content protection, you can use plugins to make a section of your post or page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a complete membership site with separate login details for all users …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to improve your site in lots of ways. From installing new features that enhance your business, your web users’ experience and your ability to review website metrics …

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

You can also add complex features to your site using relatively inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can install plugins that automate features on your website such as displaying customer testimonials and booking events …

And also set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring software developers to code similar applications for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that will enhance user engagement …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site increased exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on social networking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online with other members via online forums or even set up a private online social network on your own site.
• Engage with your staff using live web conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Dial your business from their devices while browsing your pages
• Get help via a user helpdesk
• And so much more …

You can also integrate complex enterprise applications using a WordPress “front end”. This allows you to control your business marketing, while your third-party application handles the technological side of things …

Useful Information About Plugins

• There are lots of great WordPress plugins available. Be careful not to overload your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can affect your site’s resources and site loading speed. It can also mean more maintenance issues for you as a result of possible errors.
• Install only those plugins that you really need. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use server resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with very little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing paid plugins, ensure that you check some reviews online and see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we publish on this site for more information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two or more years), then think carefully before installing it. The WordPress application is updated often and older plugins that have not been updated can cause errors.
• Ensure that you always upgrade your plugins. Older plugin not only can create issues, they may also contain security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WP plugins are an important aspect of WordPress and contribute to making it the most powerful, flexible and scalable website management tool in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add new features to their web presence without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web development costs.

One last thing about WP plugins:

Whatever functionality you need for your web presence, you can be sure that a someone has probably already developed one that will do just what you want it to do, and that it 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 such a plugin has not been created yet, then it can certainly be coded for your business for a very reasonable price.

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

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