Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the most powerful advantages of building a website using WordPress is the ability to quickly and easily enhance your WordPress site’s functionality using inexpensive (even completely free) software called plugins.

About WordPress Plugins

Like most of us, you probably own a device like a smart phone. What do you do when you want access to something new on your phone like a new game or business productivity tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little software that is very simple and easy to install and adds new features and functionality to your smart device.

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

A WP plugin is like an app. You simply download and install an application that adds new functionality to your WP site …

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

Normally, adding new features to an already-built website involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the feature or enhancement is, the cost can be fairly significant, especially if website developers need to add new code or modify code or install programs that integrate with your current set up.

This is also applicable when setting up a website or business blog. Organizations tend to spend money for additional components they may probably never need.

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

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a professional-looking website up and running fast, then …

2) As you need new features, install new software modules with a couple of mouse clicks directly from within your dashboard panel, and give your website or blog an entirely new range of practical functionality, and …

3) Cost not one dollar more to add to your web site?

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

Plugins – Benefits & Advantages

Earlier, we compared WordPress plugins with mobile apps. Just like many apps are free to download and some may cost a little bit of money, the same is true of WP plugins.

In fact, thousands of great plugins are freely available for WP users.

WordPress plugins that you have to buy are called 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 plugins are priced quite cheaply.

Also, since WordPress makes its code available to everyone, any web developer can create, rewrite and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has allowed many professional web developers to build more new plugins that enhance the WordPress application than you can possibly imagine.

• WordPress plugins let you start off with just a basic yet professional web site and add new features and enhancements to your site only when required.
• WP plugins let you add practically unlimited features to your web presence quickly and inexpensively.
• Plugins give your site almost endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow business owners to have a site that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your website with new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more extensive features and may require some configuration.

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

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

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

As mentioned earlier, you can find WordPress plugins that can do almost anything you can think of.

There are plugins for:

• Web Site Management
• Content Distribution
• Increasing Web Visitors
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Connectivity
• Managing Media – Videos, Graphics, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales And Advertising Automation
• Increasing Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting
• Optimizing Your WordPress Site

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

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Surveys
• Managing ad banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Instant language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site from English to Portuguese)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your blog
• Set appointments and appointment reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and send you reports
• Redirect web links
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Exclude pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your pages and posts
• Migrate data from non-WP applications
• Search and replace content
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Inserting scripts and script elements into your posts and pages
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map of your business location
• Post your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and many others
• Show countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, WordPress plugins give you practically limitless possibilities. If you are planning to build a web site, or your existing site was not built with WordPress, then consider choosing WordPress in the future.

In case you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let me show you how you can benefit instantly by installing a plugin on your website.

For example, if you want to publish content which is only accessible to some but not all users, you can install plugins to make an area of your post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a professional membership site with customized login details for users …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to improve your web presence in so many ways. From adding features that will improve your business, your visitors’ experience and your ability to review website data …

To increasing your business reach across many social networks and search engines …

You can also add complex features to your website using relatively inexpensive paid WP plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that integrate and automate features on your site such as user feedback and event registrations management …

And also set up a custom bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying programmers to design similar applications for you …

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

For example, your visitors can:

• Leave comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Share your content with other online visitors on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with other online users via online forums or even set up an online community on your site.
• Engage with members of your team via live chats
• Dial your business directly from their devices when visiting your pages
• Get help and support via a dedicated user help desk
• And much more …

You can also integrate sophisticated enterprise-level applications with a WordPress “front end”. This enables you to manage your business marketing, while your third-party application handles the technological areas …

Some Useful Tips About WordPress Plugins

• There are so many plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will affect your website’s resources and site loading speed. It also creates more maintenance issues for you as a result of possible conflicts.
• Only keep those plugins that you really need. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these utilize extra resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive very little to no support from the plugin author. When considering paid WP plugins, ensure that you check some reviews online and see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check our plugin reviews for additional expert 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 installing it. WordPress changes regularly and older plugins that have not been updated can cause conflicts.
• Make sure that you always maintain your plugins up-to-date. Outdated plugin not only can create problems, they could also contain vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most popular digital content publishing tool available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add new functionality to their website without having to spend thousands of dollars on web developers.

One last thing on the subject of WordPress plugins:

If there is any feature or functionality you want for your website, you can be sure that a someone has probably already developed one that will do what you want it to do, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that it will be surprisingly inexpensive.

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

And, if by chance this WP plugin is not available, then one can probably be coded for your business for a reasonable price.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of WP plugins – what they are and how they can help expand your business blog. See our related posts to learn about more popular WordPress plugins that we recommend using.

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