Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the main advantages of building a website with WordPress is that you can quickly and easily increase your WordPress web site’s functionality using plugins.

What Are WordPress Plugins?

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

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little software that is very easy to install and adds new features and functionality to a smart device.

(Just as there are social sharing apps for mobile phones …)

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

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

Normally, expanding the functionality of an already-built website involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the new features or enhancements, this cost can be significant, particularly if it involves website development.

This also applies when setting up a website. Business owners sometimes invest up front in extra components they may probably never need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we recommend considering a modular strategy when developing a digital presence presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

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

2) As the need for new features arises, just add new applications with just a couple of mouse clicks directly from within your dashboard panel, to give your site a completely new and expanded range of possibilities, and …

3) Cost not one cent more to download and install on your website?

Well, this is just what a WP plugin enables you to do!

Benefits & Advantages Of Plugins

We began this blog post by comparing plugins with smartphone apps. In the same way that some apps are free to download and some cost a little bit of money, so do plugins.

In fact, many plugins are freely available for users.

Plugins that you buy are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of paying for web development services to get the same functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are priced quite cheaply.

Also, because WordPress makes its source code publicly available, any person can create, rewrite and customize any part of the code. This has allowed many professional software developers to build more new plugins that expand WordPress than you can imagine.

• Plugins allow you to get started with just a basic online business presence and expand only as necessary.
• WordPress plugins allow you to add practically endless functionality to your website quickly and quite inexpensively.
• Plugins give your website almost unlimited expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow business owners to own a website that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your web site instant new enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins can be a little more advanced and could require some initial configuration.

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

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

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

As previously mentioned, you will find WP plugins that will do just about everything you can imagine.

There are WP plugins for:

• Site Management
• Content Management
• Traffic
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Connectivity
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting Tools
• Website Optimization

You can enhance your business online presence with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Display ad banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonial forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to Italian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage integration
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell spots on your website
• Set up client appointments and reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect web pages
• 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. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your posts and pages
• Import information from other CMS platforms
• Perform bulk content edits
• Fight SPAM
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. display Facebook posts)
• Insert code and code elements into your posts, pages and sidebar menus
• Add tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map of your business location
• Post your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and others
• Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, WordPress plugins give you endless possibilities. If you plan to build a website or blog for your business, or your existing site wasn’t built using WordPress, then consider using it in the future.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WP plugins are, let me show you some practical advantages of installing an inexpensive plugin on your web site.

For example, if you need to publish private content, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on your page inaccessible, or create a full paid membership site with separate login details for every user …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to improve your web presence in lots of different ways. From installing functionality that can improve your business, your site’s user experience and your ability to review visitor data …

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

You can also add advanced features to your website using relatively inexpensive paid WP plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that automate functionality on your pages such as user feedback and event bookings management …

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

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that will enhance your site’s interactivity …

For example, your visitors can:

• Leave comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with increased exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on various social sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with your team using forums or even set up a private social network on your domain.
• Engage with members of your team through live webcam conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Dial your business from their devices while browsing your site
• Get help and support via a customer support helpdesk
• And so much more …

Finally you, can also integrate sophisticated enterprise applications using a WP “front end”. This lets you control the content that your visitors see on your website, while your 3rd-party application handles the technical areas …

WP Plugins – Additional Information

• There are lots of good plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with too many plugins, as this will invariably begin to affect your website’s performance and page loading times. It can also create more maintenance work for you resulting from potential conflicts and errors.
• Only keep those plugins you really need. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use resources.
• Many free plugins often come with very little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering premium WP plugins, we recommend that you check around a little and see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of our plugin reviews for additional information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think carefully before using it on your site. WordPress changes frequently and older plugins that have not been updated can create issues.
• Always upgrade your plugins to the latest software version. Outdated plugin not only can cause errors and conflicts, they could also contain vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

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

One last thing on the subject of plugins:

Whatever functionality you want for your web presence, you can be sure that a someone has probably already developed one that will do just what you want, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that it will be surprisingly inexpensive.

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

And, if by chance such a WP plugin is not available, then a custom plugin that does precisely what you want it to do can probably be coded for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of WP plugins – what plugins are and how they can help expand your web site. See our published posts to learn more about using WP plugins.

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