Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the main benefits of WordPress is that you can quickly expand your WordPress website or blog’s functionality using plugins.

About Plugins

Like most of us, you probably have a device like a smart phone. What happens when you want to access something new on your phone like a new game or a business productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little software application that is easy to install and integrates new features and functionality into your smart phone.

(Just like there are social sharing apps …)

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

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

Generally, adding new features to your site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the features or enhancements are, this can get quite expensive, particularly if it involves website development.

This also applies to creating a website or business blog. Companies often pay for added bells and whistles they probably will never need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we recommend a sustainable strategy to developing your web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and with minimal cost involved. Get your business website up and running quickly, then …

2) As new features are required, install new applications with a few clicks of the mouse directly from your WordPress dashboard area, giving your site a whole new range of practical functionality, and …

3) Cost not one cent extra to add to your web site?

Well, that’s just what a WP plugin lets you do!

Benefits And Advantages Of Using WP Plugins

I began this blog post by comparing WP plugins with ’apps’. In the same way that some apps are free to download and some apps may cost a little money, the same is true with WP plugins.

In fact, many plugins can be downloaded to your site at no cost.

Plugins that cost money are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the price of buying a Premium WordPress plugin to the price of investing in professional web development services to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are generally quite inexpensive.

Also, as WordPress makes its code available to everyone, anyone can create, modify and customize any portion of the WP code. This has enabled thousands of third-party software development professionals to enhance and contribute to the WordPresssoftware.

• Plugins let you start off simply with only a simple online business presence and then expand only when necessary.
• WP plugins allow you to add practically endless features to your website easily, quickly and quite cheaply.
• Plugins give your site almost endless expansion capabilities.
• WP plugins allow ”non-techies” to own a web presence that they can manage.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your website immediate capabilities and enhancements.
• Some plugins provide more extensive features and could require some configuration.

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

Just like themes, thousands of WordPress plugins are made available to WP users … often at no cost!

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find plugins that will do almost everything you could possibly want your website to do.

There are WordPress plugins for:

• Blog Administration
• Content Management
• Traffic
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Sharing
• Media Utilities Automation
• Increasing Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Reporting
• Optimizing Your WordPress Blog

For example, you can enhance a WP site with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• User Surveys
• Managing banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User feedback forms
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your site’s content from English to German)
• 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
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your website
• Set client appointments and appointment reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
• Redirect visitors from missing pages to other pages on your site or other websites
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Hide certain from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your posts and pages
• Migrate content from different publishing platforms
• Search and replace content
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Inserting code and code elements into your content
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced text formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search listings
• Add a map
• Post your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and others
• Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you limitless possibilities. If you plan to build a web site, or your existing web site was not built with WordPress, then consider getting one added to your domain, or you could be missing out on some serious functionality.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let’s take a look at some practical uses of adding a plugin to your web site.

For example, if you want to protect your content, you can use plugins to make a section of your page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full membership site with customized login details for users …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to improve your website in so many different ways. From adding functionality that will improve your business, your website visitors’ experience and your ability to analyze visitor metrics …

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

You can also add complex functionality to your website using inexpensive paid WP plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that integrate and automate processes on your pages such as managing customer testimonials and booking events …

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

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that can allow you to engage better with your web visitors, clients and registered site members …

For example, your web visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in 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 various social sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with other users using online forums or even set up a private online social network on your own domain.
• Engage with members of your team through live web conferencing and chatrooms
• Call your business from their cellphones when browsing your website
• Get help and support via a customer helpdesk
• And much more …

Finally you, can even integrate sophisticated “back end” applications with 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 technical aspects …

Plugins – Useful Information

• There are lots of plugins available. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this can start to affect your website’s resources and site loading times. It also creates more maintenance work for you as a consequence of possible conflicts.
• Only keep those plugins you really need to use. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these utilize extra server resources.
• Many free plugins normally come with little to no support from the plugin author. When considering premium plugins, ensure that you check some reviews online and 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 the plugin reviews we provide here for additional useful information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think twice before using it. The WordPress application updates regularly and older plugins that have not been updated can create problems.
• Ensure that you always upgrade your plugins to the latest version. Outdated plugin not only can create issues, they may also have security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an important component of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most popular content management system in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add new features to their website without having to spend thousands of dollars on web developers.

One last thing regarding WP plugins:

If there is a feature you need for your web site, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already developed one that will do just what you need, and that this plugin will either be available for FREE, 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 chance this plugin does not exist, then it can certainly be written for your business for a reasonable price.

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of plugins – what plugins are and how they can help improve your blog. See our published posts to learn about more useful plugins that we recommend using.

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