Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the most powerful advantages of building a website using WordPress is that you can easily enhance your WordPress web site’s functionality using plugins.

What Are Plugins?

Like most people, you probably use a device like a smart phone. What happens when you want access to something new on your device like a new application, software or a new tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little software application that is easy to install and adds new functionality to a mobile phone.

(Just as there are social sharing apps …)

A plugin is very much like an app. You simply install a software application that provides new functionality to your WordPress site …

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

Generally, if you plan to add new features to your site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancement, the cost can be fairly significant, especially if website developers need to add new code or edit programs or develop programs that integrate with your existing site.

This also applies when starting a new website. Organizations sometimes fork out money up front for bells and whistles they probably will never need.

To minimize business costs, we suggest a cost-effective strategy to developing your website and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply with minimal cost involved. Get a basic, professional website up and running fast, then …

2) As the need arises, install new applications with a couple of mouse clicks directly from your WordPress administration section, to give your website an entirely new and expanded range of possibilities, and also …

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

Well, this is just what WordPress plugins let you do!

WP Plugins – Benefits

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

In fact, loads of plugins can be downloaded to your site for free.

WordPress plugins that cost money are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the cost of paying for web development services to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins cost very little.

Also, as WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, any web developer can create, rewrite and customize any part of the code. This has allowed many third-party software developers to enhance and contribute to the WordPresssoftware.

• Plugins let you get started with a simple web site and then expand only as necessary.
• WordPress plugins allow you to add almost unlimited functionality to any website quickly and quite cheaply.
• Plugins give your online business presence almost unlimited expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow anyone to own a website that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your web site new capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins can be slightly more advanced and may require some initial configuration.

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

Just like WordPress themes, loads of WP plugins are made available for WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find plugins that will do just about everything you could possibly want your web site to do.

There are WP plugins for:

• Web Site Administration
• Content Syndication
• Driving Site Traffic
• User Interactivity
• Social Connectivity
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Sales & Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Monitoring & Reporting Applications
• Website Security

You can expand your business online presence with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Display banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single ordering with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your site’s content from English to French)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Cloud storage integration
• Faster page loading
• Managing events & bookings
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your site
• Set client appointments and appointment reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and send you reports
• Redirect visitors from old pages to other pages on your site or other sites
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Exclude pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect page content
• Import content from non-WordPress platforms
• Perform bulk data edits
• Block SPAM
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Inserting HTML and script elements into your website’s header or footer
• Add formatted tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add a map
• Syndicate your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, WordPress plugins give you virtually limitless business flexibility. If you plan to build a website or blog, or your existing site isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider using WordPress in the future.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let me show you how you can benefit by adding an inexpensive plugin to your web site.

For example, if you need to publish content which is only accessible to some but not all users, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on your page inaccessible, or create a full membership site with customized login details for all users …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to enhance your site in lots of ways. From adding functionality that will enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

To increasing your business visibility across many social media and search engines …

You can also add complex features to your website using inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that integrate and automate processes on your site such as managing customer testimonials and booking events …

And even set up a complete bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to create similar applications for you …

You can also take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that can make your site even more interactive …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Post comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site increased exposure).
• Share your content with other web visitors on social networking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with your team via forums or even set up a private online community on your own site.
• Engage with members of your team via live video chats
• Dial your business from their smart phones while visiting your pages
• Open a support ticket
• And so much more …

Finally you, can also integrate sophisticated third-party applications within a WP “front end”. This lets you control the content that your visitors see on your site, while the third-party application handles the technological side of things …

WP Plugins – Additional Tips

• There are lots of fantastic plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your site with too many plugins, as this will inevitably affect your website’s resources and page loading times. It can also mean more maintenance work for you resulting from potential errors.
• Only keep those plugins that you really need. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these use resources.
• Many free plugins normally receive little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering premium WordPress plugins, ensure that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check our plugin recommendations for more useful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two or more years), then think carefully before using it on your website. WordPress changes on a regular basis and older plugins that have not been updated can cause conflicts.
• Make sure to always upgrade your plugins to the latest version. Outdated plugin not only can cause errors, they may also contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, WP plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most used digital content management software available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand without spending thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing on the subject of plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you need for your website, you can guarantee that a plugin probably exists that will do what you need it to do, and that it can either be accessed at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be reasonably affordable.

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

And, if by any chance this plugin has not been created yet, then one can probably be coded for you at a reasonable cost.

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

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