Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the main benefits of building a digital business presence with the WordPress web content publishing software is the ability to easily expand your WordPress website’s functionality using plugins.

What Are Plugins?

Like most people, you probably own a device like a cell phone. What do you do when you would like access to something new on your phone like a new game or a business tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is really simple and easy to install and instantly integrates new features into a smart phone.

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

A WP plugin is like an app. You simply install and activate an application that adds new functionality to your WP website or blog …

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

Almost always, expanding the functionality of an already-built website involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the features or enhancements are, the cost can be fairly significant, particularly if it requires website development.

This is also applicable when creating a new website or business blog. Many companies often pay upfront for features or options they probably will never need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we suggest a sustainable approach when growing your web presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply with minimal expense involved. Get your business website up and running quickly, then …

2) As new features and functionality are required, install new software modules with only a few mouse clicks that integrate with your current website and blog, giving your website or blog a completely new range of capabilities and functionality, and …

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

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

WP Plugins – Benefits & Advantages

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

In fact, loads of wonderful plugins can be downloaded to your website for free.

Plugins that you purchase are referred to as “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of investing in web development services to get similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are generally quite inexpensive.

Also, because WordPress is an Open Source application, any person can create, modify and customize any portion of the WP code. This has allowed many professional software developers to build more new applications that integrate with WordPress than you can imagine.

• Plugins let you get started with a basic web site and expand when required.
• WP plugins let you add practically unlimited functionality to any online business presence easily, quickly and inexpensively.
• WordPress plugins give you practically endless expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow anyone to own a website that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your website with new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins can be a little more complex and could require some configuring.

WordPress Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Often) 100% FREE!

Like themes, tens of thousands of plugins are made available for WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find plugins that will do almost everything you can imagine.

There are plugins for:

• Website Administration
• Content Distribution
• Traffic
• User Interactivity
• Social Sharing
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Analysis
• Securing Your WordPress Website

For example, you can add features to your WordPress site with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Surveys
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonial forms
• Language translation (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 menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events & bookings
• Business directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your blog
• Set up appointments and appointment reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Exclude certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your posts and pages
• Migrate content from non-WordPress applications
• Perform bulk data replacements
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Inserting scripts and code elements into your posts and pages
• Add formatted tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google local search
• Add a map
• Post your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you practically limitless possibilities. If you are planning to build a website, or your existing website was not built with WordPress, then consider getting one in the future, or you could be missing out on some serious functionality.

In case you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let me show you some practical advantages of adding a plugin to your website.

For example, if you need content protection, you can use plugins to make an area of your page or post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a professional membership site with customized login details for users …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to improve your site in lots of ways. From adding new features that can improve your business, your visitors’ experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

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

You can also add advanced features to your site using inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that integrate and automate features on your site like displaying customer testimonials and booking events …

And even set up a complete bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying web developers to design the same 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 site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with additional exposure).
• Bookmark your content on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with other users using forums or even set up a private online community on your domain.
• Engage with members of your team through live chats
• Dial your business from their devices when browsing your pages
• Get help and support via a user help desk
• And so much more …

You can also integrate complex enterprise-level solutions with a WordPress “front end”. This enables you to control your business sales and marketing, while the 3rd-party application handles the technological aspects …

Additional Things You Should Know About Plugins

• There are many plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your site with too many plugins, as this will affect your website’s performance and site loading speed. It can also mean more maintenance work for you resulting from possible conflicts.
• Install only those plugins that you really need. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use resources.
• Many free plugins normally come with very little to no support from the plugin author. When considering premium plugins, make sure you check around a little and see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of our plugin reviews for more helpful 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 website. The WordPress core software updates frequently and older plugins can cause issues.
• Ensure that you always upgrade your plugins. Outdated plugins not only can create issues, they could also contain security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most downloaded online open source tool in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand quickly without spending thousands of dollars on web developers.

One last thing on the topic of plugins:

Whatever feature you need for your website, you can be sure that a someone has probably already created one that will do what you need it to do, and that this plugin will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a premium plugin, that it will be fairly inexpensive.

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

And, if by chance such a WordPress plugin does not exist, then it can probably be coded for you for a very reasonable price.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of plugins – what plugins are and how they can help improve your website. See our related posts to learn more about usingplugins.

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