Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the most powerful benefits of the WordPress platform is that you can quickly enhance your WordPress site’s functionality using plugins.

What Are WordPress Plugins?

No doubt, you probably have a smart phone. What happens when you want to access something new on your phone like a new software or a tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little software application that is really easy to install and adds new functionality to a smart phone.

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

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

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

Almost always, if you plan to expand the functionality of your website, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the features or enhancements are, this cost can be significant, particularly if website developers need to add new code or modify programs or install programs that integrate into your current site.

This also applies to developing a website. Companies tend to fork out money in advance on added features or options they may not ever need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we suggest considering a cost-effective approach to setting up a website and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As you need more features, just install new applications with only a few mouse clicks that integrate with your existing website, giving your website a whole new range of possibilities, and also …

3) Cost not one cent more to download and install on your site?

Well, this is precisely what WordPress plugins let you do!

Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

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

In fact, many plugins can be downloaded and installed on your websites.

WP plugins that you purchase are referred to as “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to get the same functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. ”paid”) plugins are generally very inexpensive.

Also, because WordPress is an Open Source application, anyone can create, rewrite and customize any part of the code. This has enabled many professional software development professionals to build more new applications that “plug into” WordPress than you can imagine.

• WP plugins let you get started with a basic yet professional site and then expand only if necessary.
• Plugins let you add practically unlimited functionality to any web site quickly, easily and quite cheaply.
• Plugins give you almost unlimited expanding capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow business owners to have a web presence that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your website or blog with new enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins can be slightly more complex and could require some initial configuring.

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

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

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

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

Plugin categories cover:

• Site Administration
• Content Syndication
• Traffic
• User Interactivity
• Social Monitoring
• Uploading Media – Videocasts, Graphics, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales Automation
• Improving Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Reporting Tools
• Web Site Security

You can enhance your business online presence with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Surveys
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your pages from English to Norwegian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Cloud storage management
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your blog
• Set up appointments and appointment reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and send you reports
• Redirect affiliate pages
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Exclude specific from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your posts and pages
• Migrate data from non-WP applications
• Search and replace data
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Insert HTML and script elements into your posts, pages and sidebar menus
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced text formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add business location maps
• Syndicate your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you practically endless business scalability. If you are currently planning to build a web site for your business, or your existing website isn’t 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 just how powerful and flexible WordPress plugins are, let’s take a look at some practical advantages of adding a plugin to your web site.

For example, if you want to protect your content, you can use plugins to make a section of a post or page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a complete membership site with customized login details for every member …

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

To extending your business reach and visibility across social networks and search engines …

You can also add complex functionality to your site using relatively inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that automate tasks on your pages such as customer testimonial and event registrations management …

And even run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring software developers to code these functionality for you …

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

For example, your visitors can:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can grow 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 added exposure).
• Share your content with other online visitors on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with your team via forums or even set up a private social network on your own domain.
• Engage with members of your team through live webcam conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Dial your business from their cellphones when browsing your pages
• Get help and support via a customer helpdesk
• And much more …

You can even integrate sophisticated enterprise applications using a WP “front end”. This enables you to manage the content that your visitors will see on your site, while the third-party application handles the technological functions …

Some Useful Information About WordPress Plugins

• There are lots of fantastic plugins available. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this will eventually affect your site’s performance and site loading times. It also creates more maintenance work for you resulting from potential conflicts and errors.
• Only keep those plugins you really use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these also utilize resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing paid WordPress plugins, ensure that you check around a little and understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of our plugin recommendations for additional information.
• If you see that an unsupported 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 is updated regularly and outdated WP plugins can cause errors.
• Always maintain your plugins updated. Older plugins not only can cause problems, they may also have security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an important element of WordPress and contribute to making it the most used content publishing application available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add new functionality to their web presence without having to spend thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing about WordPress plugins:

If there is a feature or functionality you want for your website, you can guarantee that a WP plugin currently exists that will do exactly what you need it to do, and that it will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the price will be quite reasonable.

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

And, if by any chance such a WordPress plugin does not exist, then one can certainly be created for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can help expand your blog. See our published posts to learn more about using WP plugins.

***

***