Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the main benefits of WordPress is that you can quickly and easily enhance your WordPress website or blog’s functionality using inexpensive (and often completely free) applications called plugins.

Understanding WordPress Plugins

Like most people, you most likely own a device like a cell phone. What happens when you would like access to something new on your device like a new application, game or a new tool?

You download and install an app!

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

(Just like you will find social sharing apps …)

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

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

Normally, expanding the functionality of a site involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancement, the cost can be fairly significant, particularly if web developers need to add new code or modify templates or install scripts that integrate with your current set up.

This is also applicable when starting a new web site. Business owners tend to invest money up-front for bells and whistles they may simply not need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we recommend a cost-effective approach to growing your web site and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get your business web site up and running fast, then …

2) As you need more features and functionality, you can add new applications with a few mouse clicks directly from within your dashboard panel, giving your website or blog a whole new range of features and functionality, and also …

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

Well, this is precisely what WordPress plugins allow you to do!

WordPress Plugins – Benefits

Earlier, we compared WordPress plugins with ’apps’. Just like many apps are free to download and some apps may cost a little bit of money, so do WP plugins.

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

WordPress plugins that you have to pay for are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare these to the cost of paying for web development services to add the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. ”paid”) plugins are typically quite inexpensive.

Also, because WordPress makes its code publicly available, any person can create, edit and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has allowed many professional web development companies to enhance the core WP software application.

• Plugins let you start off with only a basic yet professional site and add new features and enhancements to your site only when necessary.
• WP plugins let you add almost unlimited features to your web presence quickly and quite cheaply.
• WP plugins give you practically unlimited expanding capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow anyone to own a website that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your web site new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more extensive options and may require some initial configuring.

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

Just like WordPress themes, loads of great plugins are available for WordPress users … for FREE!

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

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

Plugin categories cover:

• Site Management
• Content Syndication
• Web Traffic Generation
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Sharing
• Uploading Media – Video, Images, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales And Marketing Automation
• Increasing Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Reporting Tools
• Optimizing Your WordPress Web Site

For example, you can expand your WordPress site with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• User Surveys
• Display banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• 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 site from English to Italian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your blog
• Set client appointments and reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect visitors from specific pages to other areas on your site or other websites
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Exclude specific from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect page content
• Migrate data from other CMS platforms
• Search and replace content
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Inserting HTML and code elements into your posts, pages and sidebar menus
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map
• Syndicate your content automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and many others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As you can clearly see, WP plugins give you virtually limitless possibilities. If you are currently planning to build a web site, or your existing site isn’t built with WordPress, then consider choosing WordPress in the future.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WP plugins are, let me show you some practical advantages of adding an inexpensive plugin to your website.

For example, if you need to publish content which is only accessible to some users, you can use plugins to make an area of your page or post inaccessible, or create a complete paid membership site with customized login details for all users …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to enhance your site in so many different ways. From installing features that improve your business, your visitors’ experience and your understanding of what is taking place on your site …

To increasing your site’s reach across multiple social media and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your website using inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that automate features on your pages such as displaying customer testimonials and booking events …

And even run a complete bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of hiring software developers to create the same applications for you …

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

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 are then displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with increased exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on various social sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with your team members using forums or even set up a private social network on your own domain.
• Engage with members of your team using live chats
• Dial your business directly from their mobile phones while visiting your website
• Get help via a user support helpdesk
• And so much more …

You can also integrate complex enterprise-level applications with a WP “front end”. This enables you to control your business marketing, while the 3rd-party application handles the technological aspects …

Useful Information About WP Plugins

• There are loads of awesome plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can affect your site’s performance and page loading speed. It also creates more maintenance work for you resulting from potential errors.
• Only keep the plugins that you really use. Delete any plugins from your site, as these use server resources.
• Many free plugins normally come with little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing premium plugins, we recommend that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of our plugin recommendations for more information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think carefully before using it on your website. The WordPress software updates often and older plugins that have not been updated can cause issues.
• Ensure that you always keep all plugins updated to the latest software version. Older plugin not only can create problems, they could also have security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, WP plugins are an important aspect of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most downloaded content management system in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand without having to spend thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing on the topic of plugins:

Whatever functionality you want for your web site, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already created one that will do just what you want it to do, and that this plugin will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the price will be quite reasonable.

(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 precisely what you would like it to do can most certainly be coded for you at a reasonable cost.

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

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