Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the most useful benefits of building a website with WordPress is the ability to easily enhance your WordPress website or blog’s functionality using plugins.

Understanding Plugins

Like most people, you probably have a device like a mobile phone. What do you do when you would like access to something new on your phone like a new game or productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a piece of software that is really easy to install and adds new features and functionality to any mobile device.

(Just like you will find social sharing apps for smart devices …)

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

(… you can also find social sharing plugins for WordPress!)

Typically, adding a new feature to your web site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, things could get quite expensive, particularly if web developers have to add new code or edit programs or develop programs that integrate with your existing site.

This also applies when developing a new website. Companies often invest in bells and whistles they may not ever need.

For this reason, we suggest a modular approach to developing a web presence and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As the need arises, just install new applications with only a couple of clicks of the mouse directly from within your admin panel, and give your website a whole new and expanded range of practical functionality, and …

3) Cost not one dollar extra to download and install on your website?

Well, that’s precisely what WordPress plugins allow you to do!

WordPress Plugins – Benefits & Advantages

I started this post by comparing plugins with apps. Just like many apps are free to download and some may cost a little bit of money, so do WP plugins.

In fact, loads of powerful plugins are freely available for users.

WP plugins that cost money are referred to as ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of hiring a professional web developer to add the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are generally very inexpensive.

Also, since WordPress makes its source code publicly available, any web developer can create, modify and customize any portion of the code. This has enabled thousands of third-party web development professionals to create more applications that expand WordPress than you can imagine.

• WP plugins allow you to start off with a simple yet professional web presence and expand when required.
• Plugins allow you to add almost unlimited functionality to your site easily, quickly and really cheaply.
• WP plugins give your online business presence practically unlimited expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow ”non-techies” to have a site that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your web site with new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins are a little more advanced and require some initial configuring.

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

Like many WordPress themes, loads of WP plugins are made available for WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

You can access thousands of plugins from the Free WordPress Plugin Directory …

As previously mentioned, you can find WordPress plugins that can do almost everything you could think of.

There are WordPress plugins for:

• Website Administration
• Content Distribution
• Traffic
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Monitoring
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting Applications
• Website Optimization

For example, you can add features to a business online presence with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Rotating banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User 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 interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Faster page loading
• Managing events
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your blog
• Set up client appointments and appointment reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Hide specific from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your pages and posts
• Migrate data from non-WordPress applications
• Perform bulk data replacements
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Inserting code and script elements into your posts and pages
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google local search
• Add a map of your business location
• Publish your posts automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and others
• Display countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As you can clearly see, WP plugins give you virtually limitless business flexibility. If you are currently planning to build a website for your business, or your existing 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 WordPress plugins are, let’s take a look at some practical advantages of adding an inexpensive plugin to your web site.

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

As mentioned previously, you can use free plugins to improve your web site in so many ways. From installing functionality that will enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

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

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your site using relatively inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that integrate and automate processes on your website such as displaying customer testimonials and event bookings …

And also run a complete bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring web developers to create these applications for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of native WordPress commenting features and plugins that can make your site even more interactive …

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site increased exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on social networking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with other customers through online forums or even set up a private social network on your own site.
• Engage with your team using live chats
• Dial your business from their cellphones when browsing your pages
• Get support via a dedicated user help desk
• And much more …

You can also integrate sophisticated third-party applications using a WordPress “front end”. This enables you to manage the content that your visitors see on your website, while the 3rd-party application handles the technical areas …

Useful Tips About Plugins

• There are many plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your site with too many plugins, as this can eventually affect your site’s resources and page loading times. It can also create more maintenance issues for you resulting from potential conflicts.
• Install only those plugins you really plan to use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use server resources.
• Many free plugins normally come with little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering paid plugins, we recommend that you check around a little and understand 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 helpful 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 on your site. The WordPress core software changes often and older plugins that have not been updated can create errors.
• Ensure to always keep your plugins upgraded to their most recent version. Outdated plugins not only can create issues, they may also have security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, WP plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most powerful, flexible and scalable content management system available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add new functionality to their web presence without spending thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing on the topic of plugins:

If there is a feature you want for your web presence, you can guarantee that a plugin probably exists that will do just what you need it to do, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the cost to buy it will be very reasonable.

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

And, if by chance such a plugin is not available, then it can probably be coded for your business at a reasonable cost.

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

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