Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the most powerful benefits of building a website with the WordPress web site publishing software is the ability to easily expand your WP website or blog’s functionality using inexpensive (and often completely free) applications called plugins.

What Are WP Plugins?

Like most people, you most likely use a device like a mobile phone. What do you do when you want to access something new on your device like a new application, game or a tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is easy to install and instantly integrates new features into any mobile device.

(Just as you can find social sharing apps for mobile devices …)

A WP plugin is like an app. You simply install a software application that provides new functionality to your website or blog …

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

Typically, if you want to add new features to a website, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, the cost can be quite significant, particularly if it requires editing code.

This is also applicable to creating a website. Business owners will often pay money in advance for features or options they probably will never need.

To save money and keep costs down, we suggest a cost-effective approach to developing a web presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a professional business web presence up and running fast, then …

2) As the need becomes apparent, you can install new software modules with just a couple of clicks of the mouse that integrate with your existing web site, giving your website or blog a completely new range of practical capabilities, and also …

3) Cost not a single dollar more to download and install on your web site?

Well, this is precisely what WP plugins let you do!

Plugins – Benefits

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

In fact, many fantastic plugins are available at no cost to WordPress users.

WordPress plugins that you have to pay for are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of investing in web development services to get similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins cost very little.

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 professional software development companies to build more new applications that “plug into” WordPress than you can possibly imagine.

• Plugins let you start off simply with a simple yet professional online business presence and expand if necessary.
• WordPress plugins allow you to add practically unlimited features to any website easily, quickly and inexpensively.
• Plugins give your online presence almost endless expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow business owners to have a web presence that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your site instant new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins are a little more complex and may require some configuration.

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

Just like WordPress themes, loads of great WordPress plugins are currently available for WP users … often at no cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you can find WP plugins that can do almost everything you want done.

WP plugin categories cover:

• Web Site Administration
• Content Syndication
• Driving Web Visitors
• User Interactivity
• Social Engagement
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Monitoring & Reporting
• WordPress SEO

You can expand a website with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Surveys
• Display ad banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User feedback forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your website from English to Italian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events & bookings
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your site
• Set up appointments and reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect affiliate links
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Hide specific from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect post content sections
• Migrate information from other publishing applications
• Perform bulk content edits
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
• Inserting HTML and script elements into your posts
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Publicize your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and others
• Display countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, WP plugins give you virtually endless business flexibility. If you are planning to build a website for your business, or your existing website isn’t built with WordPress, then consider getting one built on your domain, or you will 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 installing a plugin on your web site.

For example, if you want to publish content which is only accessible to some users, you can install plugins to make a section of your post or page inaccessible, or create a complete membership site with customized login details for users …

As mentioned previously, you can use free plugins to enhance your web presence in so many different ways. From adding new features that will enhance your business, your web users’ experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

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

You can also add advanced features to your website using relatively inexpensive premium WordPress plugins. For example, you can download plugins that integrate and automate processes on your pages such as customer feedback and event bookings management …

And even set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring software developers to design these functionality for you …

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

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site added exposure).
• Bookmark your content on social networking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with other online users via forums or even set up a private community on your own site.
• Engage with your support staff via live video chats
• Call your business directly from their mobile phones when visiting your site
• Get support via a user helpdesk
• And much more …

Finally you, can also integrate complex enterprise-level applications with a WP “front end”. This enables you to manage the content that your visitors will see on your site, while the 3rd-party application handles the technical aspects …

Additional Information About Plugins

• There are lots of terrific plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can eventually affect your website’s performance and site loading speed. It can also mean more maintenance issues for you resulting from potential errors.
• Only keep those plugins you really need to use. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these utilize server resources.
• Many free plugins often come with little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering premium WP plugins, ensure that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of our WP plugin recommendations for additional 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 installing it. WordPress changes on a regular basis and older plugins can create errors.
• Always keep your plugins up-to-date. Older plugin not only can create conflicts, they could also have vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most popular CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand quickly without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web development.

One last thing on the topic of plugins:

Whatever feature you want for your web site, you can guarantee that a plugin currently exists that will do exactly what you need it to do, and that this plugin will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the price to buy it will be reasonable.

(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 most certainly be developed for you for a very reasonable price.

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

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