Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the main benefits of the WordPress software is that you can quickly and easily expand your WP website or blog’s functionality using applications called plugins.

What Are Plugins?

No doubt, you probably own a device like a cell phone. What happens when you want to access something new on your phone like a new application, game or business productivity tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is easy to install and integrates new functionality into a smart phone.

(Just as you will find social sharing apps …)

A plugin is similar to an app. You simply install and activate a little piece of software that adds new functionality to your site …

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

Normally, adding new features to your website involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the new feature or enhancement, the cost can be quite significant, especially if web developers have to add new code or edit templates or install scripts to integrate into your current set up.

This is also applicable to developing a website. Business owners will often invest money in features they probably will never need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we recommend a sustainable strategy to developing a website and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply and with minimal expense involved. Get a web site up and running quickly, then …

2) As new features or functionality become necessary, add new applications with just a few mouse clicks directly from within your WordPress administration panel, to give your web site a whole new and expanded range of possibilities, and also …

3) Cost not a single dollar extra to add to your website?

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

Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

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

In fact, thousands of plugins can be downloaded to your website at no cost.

Plugins that you have to buy are referred to as ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of hiring a professional web developer to add the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. ”paid”) plugins are generally quite inexpensive.

Also, as WordPress is an Open Source application, anybody can create, rewrite and customize any part of the WP code. This has allowed many third-party software developers to create more plugins that add new functionality to WordPress than you can imagine.

• Plugins allow you to start off with a simple online business presence and then add new features and enhancements to your site only if necessary.
• Plugins allow you to add almost unlimited functionality to any web site quickly and quite cheaply.
• WP plugins give you practically unlimited expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow anyone 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 and enhancements.
• Some plugins offer more extensive options and could require some configuring.

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

Like many WordPress themes, thousands of WP plugins are available to WP users … and many of these great plugins are 100% FREE!

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

As previously mentioned, you can find WordPress plugins that can do just about everything you could imagine.

Plugin categories cover:

• Blog Administration
• Content Syndication
• Online Traffic Generation
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Sharing
• Managing Media Files – Video, Images, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales And Marketing Automation
• Improving Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Analysis
• Web Site SEO

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

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Rotating ad banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Automatic language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your website from English to Italian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Faster page loading
• Managing events
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your site
• Set client appointments and appointment reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Hide specific from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide page content
• Import data from non-WordPress platforms
• Search and replace content
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. display Facebook posts)
• Insert code and script elements into your posts, pages and sidebars
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphics 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 social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and many others
• Display countdown timers (for special 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 currently planning to build a web site, or your existing website wasn’t built using WordPress, then consider getting a WordPress site or blog in the future, or you could be missing out on some serious features.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WP plugins are, let’s take a look at some practical advantages of adding a plugin to your site.

For example, if you want to protect your content, you can install plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a page or post inaccessible, or create a full paid membership site with customized login details for every user …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to improve your web presence in lots of different ways. From installing features that will enhance your business, your website visitors’ experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

To extending your business reach across various social media and search engines …

You can also add advanced functionality to your website using relatively inexpensive premium WP plugins. For example, you can purchase plugins that integrate and automate functions on your site such as user testimonial and event bookings management …

And even run a complete bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to build the same applications for you …

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

For example, your visitors can:

• Leave comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Bookmark your content on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with other members through online forums or even set up an online community on your domain.
• Engage with members of your team through live web conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Call your business from their laptops while browsing your website
• Open a support ticket
• And much more …

You can even integrate complex enterprise-level solutions using a WP “front end”. This enables you to manage your business sales and marketing, while the third-party application handles the technological areas …

Plugins – Additional Information

• There are so many plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with too many plugins, as this can begin to affect your site’s resources and site loading speed. It also means more maintenance work for you as a consequence of possible errors.
• Only keep those plugins you really need. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use server resources.
• Many free plugins often come with little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering paid plugins, we recommend that you check some reviews online and see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check our plugin reviews for additional 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 on your website. The WordPress platform updates often and outdated WP plugins can create issues.
• Always update your plugins. Older plugins not only can create conflicts, they may also contain vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an important aspect of WordPress and contribute to making it the most powerful, flexible and scalable website open source solution in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand quickly without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web development.

One last thing regarding WordPress plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you need for your website, you can guarantee that a WordPress plugin probably exists that will do just what you need, and that it can either be accessed at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be surprisingly 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 a custom plugin that does just what you want it to do can most certainly be coded for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can expand your business blog. See our related posts section to learn more about usingplugins.

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