Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the main benefits of building an online presence with the WordPress web site publishing platform is that you can easily enhance your WordPress website or blog’s functionality using plugins.

About WordPress Plugins

Like most of us, you most likely own a device like a cell phone. What do you do when you would like access to something new on your device like a new game or a business tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a software that is easy to install and integrates new features and functionality into any smart device.

(Just like there are social sharing apps for smart devices …)

A WP plugin is very much like an app. You install a software that provides new functionality to your WP site …

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

Almost always, if you decide to add a new feature to a website, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, things can get fairly expensive, especially if web developers need to add new code or modify templates or develop scripts that integrate into your existing set up.

This is also applicable when setting up a new web site. Companies often invest money in advance in additional features and options they probably will never need.

For this reason, we suggest a cost-effective strategy when setting up a online presence presence and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and with minimal cost involved. Get a basic, professional web presence up and running quickly, then …

2) As you need new features, install new applications with a few clicks of the mouse that integrate with your current website and blog, giving your website or blog a whole new and expanded range of possibilities, and also …

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

Well, this is just what WordPress plugins let you do!

Plugins – Benefits

We started this article by comparing plugins with ’apps’. In a similar way that many apps are free to download and some apps may cost a little money, the same applies with WordPress plugins.

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

WP plugins that you buy are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the price of hiring a professional web developer to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins cost very little.

Also, as WordPress makes its source code publicly available, any web developer can create, rewrite and customize any part of the WP code. This has allowed thousands of third-party web developers to enhance and contribute to the core software application.

• WordPress plugins allow you to start off with just a simple web site and expand only if necessary.
• WordPress plugins let you add almost endless features to your website quickly and cheaply.
• WP plugins give your web site almost endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow ”non-techies” to own a digital presence that they can manage.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your website or blog with instant new capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more advanced features and require some initial configuring.

WP Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Often) Completely FREE!

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

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find WordPress plugins that can do almost anything you could possibly need your website to do.

WP plugin categories cover:

• Blog Administration
• Content Distribution
• Online Traffic Generation
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Engagement
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Analysis Tools
• Securing Your

You can enhance a business online presence with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your website from English to German)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Faster page loading
• Managing events
• Business directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your website
• Set appointments and reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect web pages
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude certain from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your pages and posts
• Import data from non-WordPress platforms
• Search and replace content
• Fight SPAM
• Customize visitor discussions (e.g. display Facebook discussions)
• Inserting scripts and script elements into your pages
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add business location maps
• Distribute your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you endless business flexibility. If you are currently planning to build a website, or your existing website isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider getting a WordPress site or blog in the future, or you will be missing out on some serious functionality.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let’s take a look at some practical uses of installing an inexpensive plugin on your website.

For example, if you want to protect your content, you can install plugins to make an area of your post or page inaccessible, or create a complete paid membership site with personal login details for each member …

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

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

You can also add advanced functionality to your site using inexpensive paid WordPress plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that integrate and automate tasks on your pages like customer feedback and event registrations management …

And also set up a custom bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring web developers to design these applications for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that will let you engage in various ways with web visitors, clients and registered site members …

For example, your visitors can:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with your team through online forums or even set up a private social network on your own domain.
• Engage with members of your team using live video chats
• Call your business directly from their smart phones while visiting your pages
• Open support tickets
• And much more …

Finally you, can even integrate complex “back end” solutions within a WP “front end”. This lets you control your business marketing, while your 3rd-party application handles the technological aspects …

WP Plugins – Some Useful Tips

• There are lots of amazing plugins available. Be careful not to overload your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can affect your website’s resources and site loading times. It also creates more maintenance work for you resulting from potential conflicts.
• Install only those plugins that you really need. Delete any plugins from your site, as these use server resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with little to no support from the plugin author. When considering premium plugins, we recommend that you check around a little and understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we publish on this site for additional helpful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think twice before using it on your website. The WordPress platform changes regularly and older plugins that have not been updated can create conflicts.
• Always maintain your plugins updated. Older plugin not only can create problems, they could also contain security 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 popular online publishing platform in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add instant functionality to their website without having to spend thousands of dollars on outsourced web development.

One last thing on the topic of WordPress plugins:

Whatever functionality you want for your web site, you can be sure that a someone has probably already authored one that will do exactly what you need, and that this plugin can either be downloaded at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be reasonably affordable.

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

And, if by any chance this WP plugin has not been created yet, then it can probably be developed for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of plugins – what plugins are and how they can improve your blog. See our published posts to learn about more popular WordPress plugins that we recommend using.

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