Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the main advantages of choosing WordPress is the ability to quickly expand your WordPress web site’s functionality using inexpensive (even 100% free) software called ’plugins’.

What Are Plugins?

Like most people, you most likely own a smart phone. What happens when you want to access something new on your phone like a new application, software or a business productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

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

(Just like there are social sharing apps for mobile devices …)

A plugin is quite similar to an app. You simply install and activate a software that provides new functionality to your WordPress website or blog …

(… there are also social sharing plugins for WordPress sites!)

Generally, if you need to add a new feature to an already-built site, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, the cost can be quite significant, especially if it involves modifying code.

This is also applicable when creating a new website. Businesses tend to fork out money in advance for added features they may probably never need.

To save money and keep your expenses low, we recommend using a modular approach to setting up your web site and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As you need new features and functionality, install new applications with only a couple of clicks of the mouse directly from your WordPress administration section, to give your site an entirely new and expanded range of useful capabilities, and also …

3) Cost not one dollar extra to install on your site?

Well, this is exactly what a WordPress plugin lets you do!

Plugins – Benefits & Advantages

We started this post by comparing WP plugins with apps. Just like some apps are free to download and some may cost a little money, the same is true of plugins.

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

WP plugins that you have to pay for are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of investing in web development services to add the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are typically quite inexpensive.

Also, because WordPress makes its code publicly available, any person can create, rewrite and customize any part of the WP code. This has allowed many professional software development professionals to enhance and contribute to the WordPresssoftware.

• Plugins let you get started simply with a basic yet professional website and add new features and enhancements to your site if necessary.
• WP plugins allow you to add practically endless features to any website easily and cheaply.
• Plugins give you virtually endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical users to have a website that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your website immediate enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins can be a little more advanced and may need some initial configuration.

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

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

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

As previously mentioned, you will find WP plugins that can do just about anything you need done.

Plugin categories cover:

• Blog Management
• Content Syndication
• Web Traffic Generation
• User Engagement
• Social Sharing
• Inserting Media Files – Videos, Images, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales Automation
• Increasing Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Analysis Tools
• Optimizing Your

For example, you can expand a WP site with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• User Surveys
• Display banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User feedback forms
• Automatic language translation (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.
• Media integration
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events & bookings
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your website
• Set up appointments and appointment reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Exclude pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect post content
• Migrate content from other CMS platforms
• Perform bulk data replacements
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Inserting code and code elements into your posts, pages and sidebar menus
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search listings
• Add a map of your business location
• Post your content automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and many others
• Display countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As you can clearly see, WP plugins give you endless business scalability. If you are currently planning to build a website for your business, or your existing web site isn’t 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’s take a look at some practical advantages of adding a plugin to your web site.

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

As mentioned previously, you can use free plugins to enhance your business site in so many ways. From adding functionality that improve your business, your visitors’ experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

To extending your business reach across many social sites and search engines …

You can also add complex features to your website using inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can purchase plugins that integrate and automate tasks on your pages like displaying customer testimonials and event bookings …

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

You can also take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that will enhance your site’s interactivity …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site increased exposure).
• Share your content with other web visitors on social media.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with your team via forums or even set up an online community on your site.
• Engage with your team through live video chats
• Dial your business directly from their devices while visiting your pages
• Get help via a dedicated client helpdesk
• And much more …

You can even integrate sophisticated enterprise-level solutions with a WordPress “front end”. This lets you control the content that your visitors see on your web site, while your 3rd-party application handles the technological side of things …

Plugins – Some Useful Information

• There are loads of awesome plugins available. Be careful of overloading your site with too many plugins, as this can eventually start to affect your website’s resources and page loading times. It can also mean more maintenance issues for you as a consequence of possible conflicts.
• Install only those plugins that you really need. Delete all unnecessary plugins from your site, as these also consume server resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing premium plugins, make sure you check some reviews online and understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, 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 twice before using it. The WordPress platform updates on a frequent basis and older plugins that have not been updated can cause issues.
• Make sure to always upgrade your plugins to the most recent software version. Outdated plugin not only can cause errors, they could also have security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an important part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most preferred CMS 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 or functionality you want for your web presence, you can be sure that a someone has probably already created one that will do exactly what you need, and that it can either be downloaded at no cost, 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 any chance such a plugin does not exist, then it can certainly be developed for you at a reasonable cost.

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

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