Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the most powerful advantages of building a website using the WordPress platform is the ability to easily expand your WordPress website or blog’s functionality using inexpensive (and often 100% free) applications called ’plugins’.

What Are WP Plugins?

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

You download and install an app!

An app is a software application that is very simple and easy to install and instantly integrates new functionality into any smart device.

(Just as you can find social sharing apps …)

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

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

Typically, if you want to expand the functionality of a website, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the feature or enhancements, the cost can be significant, particularly if it involves website development.

This also applies to developing a new website or business blog. Businesses will often pay for components they probably will never need.

To minimize costs, we suggest a cost-effective strategy to growing your web presence and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As more features become necessary, just add new software modules with a couple of clicks of the mouse directly from within your WP admin section, giving your web site an entirely new and expanded range of capabilities and functionality, and also …

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

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

Plugins – Benefits

Earlier, we compared plugins with ’apps’. In the same way that many apps are free to download and some apps may cost a little bit of money, so do WP plugins.

In fact, many plugins can be downloaded to your website for free.

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 the same functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. ”paid”) plugins cost very little.

Also, since WordPress makes its source code available to everyone, any person can create, rewrite and customize any portion of the code. This has allowed many third-party software developers to create more new plugins that “plug into” WordPress than you can possibly imagine.

• Plugins allow you to start off simply with a simple web site and expand only if required.
• WordPress plugins let you add practically unlimited features to any web site quickly and cheaply.
• WordPress plugins give your web site almost endless expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow non-technical users to have a site that they can manage.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your site instant new capabilities and enhancements.
• Some plugins can be slightly more advanced and could require some configuring.

WordPress Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Often) 100% FREE!

Like themes, loads of great WordPress plugins are currently available for WordPress users … and many of these great plugins are 100% FREE!

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find plugins that can do almost anything you could think of.

Plugin categories cover:

• Website Management
• Content Syndication
• Increasing Web Visitors
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Monitoring
• Media Management Automation
• Increasing Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Reporting
• Optimizing Your WP Website

For example, you can add features to your website with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• User Surveys
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your website from English to Norwegian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Cloud storage management
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your site
• Set up client appointments and appointment reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect users from broken pages to other areas on your site or other websites
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Exclude specific from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your posts and pages
• Import content from other CMS platforms
• Perform bulk content edits
• Block SPAM
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. display Facebook comments)
• Insert HTML and code elements into your content
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search listings
• Add a map
• Syndicate your posts automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and many others
• Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you endless possibilities. If you are currently planning to build a website, or your existing website wasn’t built using 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 WordPress plugins, let me show you some practical advantages of adding an inexpensive plugin to your site.

For example, if you want 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 post inaccessible, or create a full paid membership site with customized login details for users …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to enhance your web presence in so many different ways. From installing functionality that enhance your business, your web users’ experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

To extending your business reach across many social media and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your site using relatively inexpensive premium WordPress plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that automate functionality on your pages such as managing customer testimonials and event registration details …

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

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that will let you engage even more with web visitors, clients and registered site members …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Share your posts with other online users on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online with your staff using online forums or even set up a private online social network on your own site.
• Engage with your staff using live chats
• Dial your business from their laptops while browsing your site
• Get help via a client helpdesk
• And much more …

Finally you, can also integrate sophisticated “back end” applications with a WordPress “front end”. This lets you manage your business sales and marketing, while the 3rd-party application handles the technological areas …

WordPress Plugins – Useful Information

• There are loads of WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this will affect your website’s resources and site loading times. It also creates more maintenance work for you as a consequence of possible conflicts and errors.
• Install only the plugins that you really use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use extra resources.
• Many free plugins normally come with very little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing premium plugins, make sure you check some reviews online and understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of our plugin reviews for more expert information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think carefully before using it. The WordPress platform is updated frequently and out-of-date WordPress plugins can create conflicts.
• Ensure that you always upgrade your plugins. Outdated plugins not only can create conflicts, they could also have vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

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

One last thing on the subject of WP plugins:

Whatever functionality you want for your web presence, you can guarantee that a WordPress plugin probably 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 fairly affordable.

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

And, if by any chance such a plugin is not available, then a custom plugin that does just what you would like it to do can certainly be created for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of WordPress plugins – what plugins are and how they can help enhance the functionality of your website. See our related posts section to learn more about using WP plugins.

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