Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the main advantages of building a web presence with WordPress is the ability to easily increase your WP web site’s functionality using plugins.

What Are WP Plugins?

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

You download and install an app!

An app is a little software application that is easy to install and integrates new features and functionality into any smart phone.

(Just as you will find social sharing apps …)

A plugin is very similar to an app. You simply download and install a software application that adds new functionality to your WordPress site …

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

Normally, expanding the functionality of a site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, this cost can be quite significant, particularly if it requires programming code.

This also applies to creating a new website. Many organizations sometimes fork out money for components they probably will never need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we recommend considering a sustainable approach when growing a website and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

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

2) As more features and functionality are required, add new applications with a few mouse clicks directly from your WordPress admin panel, giving your site a completely new range of useful features, and …

3) Cost not one cent extra to install on your website?

Well, this is exactly what WP plugins allow you to do!

Plugins – Benefits

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

In fact, thousands of plugins are available at no cost to users.

WP plugins that you have to pay for are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the price of a Premium WP plugin 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 distributes its software as an Open Source application, any web developer can create, modify and customize any part of the WP code. This has enabled thousands of third-party web developers to create more new tools that enhance WordPress than you can probably imagine.

• Plugins let you get started with a basic online business presence and then add new features and enhancements to your site when required.
• Plugins let you add almost unlimited features to any website quickly, easily and really cheaply.
• WordPress plugins give your online presence practically endless expansion capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow ”non-techies” to own a site that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your website or blog with new enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins offer more advanced features and may require some configuring.

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

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

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

As mentioned earlier, you can find plugins that will do almost anything you can possibly want a site to do.

WordPress plugin categories cover:

• Website Administration
• Content Distribution
• Traffic
• User Engagement
• Social Sharing
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Monitoring & Reporting Applications
• Securing Your WP Web Site

You can add features to a WordPress site with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• User Surveys
• Managing banners
• E-commerce (from managing single ordering with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• 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 all content on your site from English to Norwegian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Cloud storage management
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your blog
• Set client appointments and reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
• Redirect website links
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude certain from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your posts and pages
• Import content from different CMS platforms
• Search and replace content
• Fight SPAM
• Customize visitor discussions (e.g. display Facebook comments)
• Insert code and script elements into your posts and pages
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search results
• Add business location maps
• Syndicate your content automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and many others
• Show countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you practically endless possibilities. If you plan to build a web site, or your existing site wasn’t built using WordPress, then consider choosing it in the future.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WP plugins are, let’s take a look at how you can benefit instantly by simply adding an inexpensive plugin to your web site.

For example, if you need to publish private content, you can install plugins to make an area of your page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full paid membership site with customized login details for users …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to enhance your business site in so many different ways. From installing features that will improve your business, your web users’ experience and your ability to analyze website metrics …

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

You can also add advanced features to your website using inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that integrate and automate features on your pages such as customer feedback and event registrations management …

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

You can also take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that can increase your site’s interactivity …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Post comments on your site (which can grow 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 increased exposure).
• Bookmark your content on various social sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with your team members using online forums or even set up a private social network on your site.
• Engage with members of your team via live chats
• Dial your business from their devices when visiting your site
• Get help and support via a client helpdesk
• And much more …

You can also integrate complex 3rd-party solutions using a WordPress “front end”. This lets you control the content that your visitors will see on your website, while the third-party application handles the technological functions …

WordPress Plugins – Useful Things You Should Know

• There are lots of plugins available. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this can invariably affect your website’s resources and site loading speed. It also means more maintenance issues for you resulting from possible conflicts.
• Install only the plugins that you really need to use. Delete any plugins from your site, as these also utilize resources.
• Many free plugins normally receive very little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering premium WordPress plugins, ensure that you check some reviews online and understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we provide on this site for additional information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think carefully before using it on your website or blog. WordPress changes often and older plugins that have not been updated can create errors.
• Ensure that you always keep all plugins upgraded to the latest software version. Older plugin not only can create errors, they could also contain security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WP plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most downloaded content management system in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing about plugins:

If there is a functionality you want for your web site, you can be sure that a someone has probably already developed one that will do exactly what you want, and that this plugin can either be accessed for FREE, or if it’s a premium plugin, that it will be reasonably affordable.

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

And, if by chance such a plugin is not available, then it can probably be developed for your business at a reasonable cost.

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

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