Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the most useful benefits of WordPress is the ability to quickly and easily increase your WordPress website’s functionality using plugins.

What Are Plugins?

No doubt, you probably use a device like a smart phone. What happens when you would like access to something new on your phone like a new game or business tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is very simple and easy to install and immediately integrates new features into a smart phone.

(Just as you will find social sharing apps …)

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

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

Normally, expanding the functionality of a website involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the feature or enhancement is, the cost can be quite significant, especially if website developers have to create new code or edit code or install scripts to integrate with your current site.

This also applies to setting up a new website or business blog. Businesses will often invest money in advance in bells and whistles they may never need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we recommend a sustainable approach to developing your presence online presence and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As the need for new features arises, add new software modules with just a couple of clicks of the mouse that integrate seamlessly with your web site, giving your website or blog an entirely new and expanded range of possibilities, and …

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

Well, that’s exactly what a WP plugin allows you to do!

Benefits & Advantages Of WP Plugins

Earlier, we compared plugins with smartphone apps. In a similar way that some apps are free to download and some apps may cost a little money, so do plugins.

In fact, thousands of great plugins can be installed and activated on your sites.

WP plugins that you buy are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins cost very little.

Also, as WordPress is an Open Source application, any person can create, modify and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has enabled many third-party software developers to build more plugins that “plug into” WordPress than you can probably imagine.

• WP plugins let you get started simply with a simple web site and add new features and enhancements to your site only when required.
• WP plugins let you add practically endless features to your web site quickly, easily and inexpensively.
• WP plugins give you virtually endless expanding capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow non-technical website owners to own a site that they can manage.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your website or blog with immediate capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more advanced features and require some initial configuration.

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

Like WordPress themes, thousands of WP plugins are available for WP users … for FREE!

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

As previously mentioned, you can find plugins that will do just about anything you need a web site to do.

There are plugins for:

• Site Administration
• Content Management
• Increasing Web Visitors
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Monitoring
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting Tools
• Site SEO

You can expand a WordPress site with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single ordering with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• 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 engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Faster page loading
• Managing events
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your blog
• Set appointments and reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
• Redirect website links
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Hide pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect page content
• Import data from different publishing platforms
• Search and replace data
• Block SPAM
• Customize visitor discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Insert HTML and script elements into your posts and pages
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map of your business location
• Publish your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and many others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, WordPress plugins give you practically limitless business flexibility. If you are currently planning to build a website for your business, or your existing website wasn’t built with WordPress, then consider choosing it 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 want content protection, you can install plugins to make a section of your post or page inaccessible, or create a full membership site with separate login details for users …

As mentioned previously, you can use free plugins to improve your site in so many ways. From adding new features that enhance your business, your website visitors’ experience and your ability to analyze visitor metrics …

To increasing your business visibility across social sites and search engines …

You can also add advanced functionality to your website using relatively inexpensive paid WordPress plugins. For example, you can download plugins that automate features on your pages such as managing customer testimonials and event registration details …

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

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that can make your site even more interactive …

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 your visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site added exposure).
• Bookmark your content on social networks.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with other online users using forums or even set up a private social network on your site.
• Engage with members of your team using live video chats
• Call your business from their laptops when visiting your website
• Get help via a user support helpdesk
• And so much more …

Finally you, can also integrate sophisticated third-party applications using a WP “front end”. This lets you manage the content that your visitors will see on your site, while the third-party application handles the technological areas …

Some Useful Things You Should Know About WP Plugins

• There are lots of plugins available. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this will begin to affect your site’s performance and page loading speed. It also means more maintenance work for you resulting from possible errors.
• Install only the plugins you really need. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these utilize additional resources.
• Many free plugins normally come with very little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing premium WP plugins, we recommend that you check some reviews online and see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of our WordPress 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 on your site. The WordPress core application is updated often and older plugins that have not been updated can create issues.
• Make sure to always keep your plugins up-to-date. Older plugin not only can cause problems, they may also have security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most powerful, flexible and scalable digital content management application in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new features to their web presence without having to spend thousands of dollars on web development costs.

One last thing about plugins:

If there is a functionality you want for your website, you can be sure that a WP plugin already exists that will do what you need, and that this plugin will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be reasonably inexpensive.

(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 certainly be coded for you for a very reasonable price.

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of WP plugins – what plugins are and how they can help expand your WordPress web site. See our published posts to learn about more useful plugins that we recommend using.

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