Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the main benefits of building a web presence with WordPress is that you can quickly increase your WordPress web site’s functionality using inexpensive (and often 100% free) software called plugins.

About WP Plugins

No doubt, you most likely have a mobile phone. What happens when you want access to something new on your device like a new game or business tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is really simple and easy to install and integrates new functionality into your smart device.

(Just as you can find social sharing apps …)

A plugin is similar to an app. You download and install a software application that adds new functionality to your WordPress website or blog …

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

Normally, if you decide to expand the functionality of your site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the feature or enhancements, things could get quite expensive, particularly if website developers need to add new code or modify templates or develop programs to integrate with your current site.

This also applies when developing a website or business blog. Companies will often fork out money in advance on extra components they probably will never need.

For this reason, we recommend using a cost-effective strategy to setting up a website and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get your business web site up and running quickly, then …

2) As more features are required, you can add new software modules with a couple of mouse clicks directly from your WordPress dashboard area, to give your web site an entirely new and expanded range of capabilities and functionality, and …

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

Well, that’s just what WordPress plugins let you do!

Benefits Of Using WP Plugins

I started this blog post by comparing plugins with apps. In a similar way that some apps are free to download and some cost a little bit of money, so do plugins.

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

Plugins that you buy are referred to as “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when you compare these to the price of hiring a professional web developer to get similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are generally very inexpensive.

Also, as WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, any web developer can create, edit and customize any portion of the code. This has allowed thousands of professional software developers to build more plugins that “plug into” WordPress than you can probably imagine.

• WordPress plugins let you start off with just a simple site and then expand only when required.
• Plugins let you add almost unlimited features to any site quickly, easily and really cheaply.
• WP plugins give your web site virtually unlimited expansion capabilities.
• WP plugins allow business owners to own a digital presence that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your website immediate enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins offer more advanced options and require some configuring.

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

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

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find WordPress plugins that will do almost anything you could possibly want your site to do.

WP plugin categories cover:

• Blog Management
• Content Distribution
• Online Traffic Generation
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Monitoring
• Managing Media Files – Video, Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales & Marketing Automation
• Increasing Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Reporting
• WP Optimization

You can expand a WordPress site with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Rotating advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce stores with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Instant language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site from English to German)
• 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 management
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events
• Business directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your site
• Set up client appointments and reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and send you reports
• Redirect affiliate pages
• Monitor what social media users 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.)
• Protect content on your posts and pages
• Migrate data from non-WordPress applications
• Perform bulk data replacements
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. display Facebook comments)
• Inserting code and code elements into your pages
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Publish your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and many others
• Show countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As you can clearly see, WordPress plugins give you practically limitless possibilities. If you plan to build a website or blog, or your existing web site isn’t built with WordPress, then consider getting one added to your domain, or you could be missing out on some serious features.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let me show you some practical uses of installing a plugin on your website.

For example, if you want content protection, you can install plugins to make an area of a page inaccessible, or create a full paid membership site with customized login details for users …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to improve your website in lots of ways. From adding new features that will improve your business, your website visitors’ experience and your ability to analyze visitor metrics …

To increasing your business reach and visibility across multiple social networks and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your site using inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can purchase plugins that integrate and automate functionality on your pages like managing customer testimonials and booking events …

And also set up a complete bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying programmers to create custom functionality for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of native WordPress commenting features and plugins that can allow you to engage more with visitors, customers and registered site users …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Leave comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Bookmark your content on social media.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with your team using online forums or even set up an online social network on your own site.
• Engage with your staff via live webcam conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Call your business directly from their cellphones when browsing your site
• Get help and support via a client helpdesk
• And much more …

You can also integrate complex 3rd-party applications within a WP “front end”. This allows you to control your business marketing, while your third-party application handles the technological functions …

Useful Things To Know About WP Plugins

• There are so many great WordPress plugins available. Be careful of overloading your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can eventually affect your site’s resources and site loading speed. It also means more maintenance issues for you as a result of potential errors.
• Install only the plugins you really use. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these also use server resources.
• Many free plugins often come with little to no support from the plugin author. When considering premium WordPress plugins, we recommend that you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we publish here for more information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think twice before using it on your site. The WordPress core software updates often and outdated plugins can create issues.
• Make sure to always maintain all plugins updated. Outdated plugin not only can cause errors and conflicts, they could also contain security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an important element of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most downloaded online open source software available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add instant functionality to their website without having to spend thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing about WordPress plugins:

If there is a feature or functionality you need for your web presence, you can be sure that a plugin probably exists that will do exactly what you need, and that it can either be accessed at no cost, or if it’s a paid 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 has not been created yet, then a custom plugin that does just what you need it to do can most certainly be coded for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of WP plugins – what they are and how they can significantly expand your WP website. See our related posts section to learn about more popular WordPress plugins that we recommend using.

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