Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the most powerful benefits of choosing WordPress is the ability to quickly expand your WP website’s functionality using plugins.

What Are WP Plugins?

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

You download and install an app!

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

(Just as you will find social sharing apps …)

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

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

Normally, expanding the functionality of an already-built web site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, this cost can be fairly significant, particularly if website developers need to create new code or edit templates or develop scripts that integrate into your current site.

This is also applicable when developing a new web site. Businesses will often spend money for additional features they probably will never need.

To save money and keep expenses low, we suggest considering a sustainable approach to developing your web site 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 your web presence up and running fast, then …

2) As more features are required, add new software modules with only a couple of mouse clicks that integrate with your existing website or blog, giving your website a completely new and expanded range of possibilities, and also …

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

Well, this is precisely what a WP plugin enables you to do!

WordPress Plugins – Benefits & Advantages

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

In fact, thousands of great plugins can be downloaded to your website for free.

WP plugins that you purchase are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of paying for web development services to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are generally quite inexpensive.

Also, as WordPress makes its source code available to everyone, any web developer can create, modify and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has allowed many third-party web developers to build more applications that work seamlessly with the WordPress software than you can possibly imagine.

• Plugins let you get started simply with a simple web presence and then add new features and enhancements to your site if necessary.
• Plugins let you add practically endless functionality to any website quickly and really inexpensively.
• Plugins give your online presence almost unlimited expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow anyone to have a site that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your web site with new capabilities and enhancements.
• Some plugins are a little more advanced and require some configuration.

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

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

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

As previously mentioned, you will find plugins that can do just about everything you want done.

WordPress plugin categories cover:

• Website Administration
• Content Management
• Online Traffic Generation
• User Engagement
• Social Engagement
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Analysis Tools
• Website Optimization

For example, you can add features to your website with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Rotating ad banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content 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.
• Cloud storage management
• Faster page loading
• Managing events
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell spots on your blog
• Set up client appointments and appointment reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect visitors from specified pages to other pages on your site or other sites
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your pages and posts
• Import content from non-WP applications
• Search and replace content
• Fight SPAM
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. display Facebook posts)
• Inserting code and script elements into your content
• Add tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced text formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map of your business location
• Post your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and others
• Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, WP plugins give you virtually endless business flexibility. If you plan to build a website or blog for your business, or your existing site isn’t built with WordPress, then consider choosing it in the future.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let me show you some practical advantages of installing a plugin on your website.

For example, if you need to publish content which is only accessible to some users, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on your page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full membership site with personal login details for all users …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to improve your website in so many ways. From installing functionality that will improve your business, your web users’ experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

To extending your site’s reach and visibility across multiple social sites and search engines …

You can also add complex functionality to your website using inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that automate processes on your pages such as user feedback and event registration management …

And even run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying web developers to create similar functionality for you …

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

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with increased exposure).
• Bookmark your content on various social 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 site.
• Engage with your team via live chats
• Call your business from their cellphones when visiting your pages
• Get help via a user helpdesk
• And much more …

Finally you, can even integrate sophisticated enterprise solutions within a WP “front end”. This lets you manage the content that your visitors see on your website, while your third-party application handles the technological areas …

Additional Information About Plugins

• There are so many good plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with too many plugins, as this will start to affect your site’s performance and site loading speed. It can also create more maintenance issues for you as a consequence of potential conflicts.
• Install only those plugins you really plan to use. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these use extra server resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive very little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing paid WP plugins, we recommend that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we provide on this site for more helpful information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think carefully before installing it. The WordPress platform changes often and older plugins that have not been updated can cause conflicts.
• Make sure that you always maintain all plugins upgraded to their most recent software version. Outdated plugin not only can create issues, they could also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an important part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most downloaded CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand without having to spend thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing regarding plugins:

If there is any feature you want for your web presence, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already created one that will do exactly what you need, and that this plugin will either be available at no cost, 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 this plugin is not available, then a custom plugin that does exactly what you would like it to do can certainly be coded for you for a very reasonable price.

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

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