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 applications called ’plugins’.

What Are Plugins?

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

You download and install an app!

An app is a piece of software that is very simple and easy to install and instantly integrates new features into a mobile phone.

(Just like there are social sharing apps …)

A WordPress plugin is very much like an app. You download and install a software application that adds new functionality to your web site …

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

Almost always, if you plan to add new features to an existing site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the new features or enhancement, things can become quite expensive, especially if website developers need to add new code or modify programs or develop scripts to integrate into your current site.

This also applies to starting a new web site. Many businesses will often invest up-front in added features or options they probably will never need.

To avoid unnecessary costs, we suggest a modular strategy when developing a web site and WP plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As more features or functionality are required, install new applications with a couple of clicks of the mouse directly from within your WP dashboard area, giving your web site a completely new range of useful capabilities, and also …

3) Cost not one dollar more to download and install on your site?

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

Benefits Of Using Plugins

We began this blog post by comparing plugins with mobile apps. In the same way that many apps are free to download and some apps cost a little money, so do WP plugins.

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

WordPress plugins that you have to pay for are referred to as “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of investing in web development services to add similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are priced quite low.

Also, because WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, anybody can create, edit and customize any part of the WordPress code. This has enabled thousands of third-party software developers to create more plugins that expand WordPress than you can probably imagine.

• Plugins allow you to start simply with a simple yet professional web presence and then expand only if required.
• WordPress plugins allow you to add practically unlimited features to any web site easily and inexpensively.
• WordPress plugins give your site practically endless expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow ”non-techies” to have a site that they can manage.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your website or blog with new enhancements and features.
• Some plugins are a little more complex and may need some initial configuration.

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

Like many themes, tens of thousands of great WP plugins are available for WP users … and many of these great plugins are 100% FREE!

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find WP plugins that will do almost anything you could imagine.

There are WordPress plugins for:

• User Management
• Content Distribution
• Online Traffic Generation
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Monitoring
• Media Utilities Automation
• Increasing Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Analysis Tools
• Securing Your

You can add features to your business online presence with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Rotating advertising banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site from English to Norwegian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media management
• Faster page loading
• Managing events & bookings
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your site
• Set up client appointments and reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect website pages
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude certain from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect page content sections
• Migrate content from different publishing platforms
• Search and replace data
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize guest commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
• Inserting code and script elements into your site’s header and footer
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add a map
• Post your posts automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and many others
• Show countdown timers (for special offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As you can clearly see, WordPress plugins give you endless business scalability. If you plan to build a web site for your business, or your existing site isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider getting a WordPress site or blog added to your domain, or you could be missing out on some serious features.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let me show you some practical advantages of installing a plugin on your web site.

For example, if you need to publish content which is only accessible to some users, you can install plugins to make an area of a post inaccessible, or create a professional membership site with personal login details for all users …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to enhance your web presence in so many ways. From installing functionality that enhance your business, your web users’ experience and your ability to review site data …

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

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your website using relatively inexpensive premium plugins. For example, you can download plugins that automate features on your site such as user testimonial and event registration management …

And also set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying programmers to create these functionality for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that can increase visitor engagement …

For example, your visitors can:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with additional exposure).
• Share your posts with other online users on social media.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with other users through forums or even set up a private online community on your domain.
• Engage with members of your team via live video chats
• Dial your business from their smart phones while browsing your pages
• Open a support ticket
• And much more …

Finally you, can also integrate complex “back end” solutions within a WordPress “front end”. This enables you to manage the content that your visitors will see on your site, while the third-party application handles the technological functions …

WordPress Plugins – Some Useful Things To Know

• There are lots of terrific plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will start to affect your site’s resources and page loading times. It can also mean more maintenance issues for you as a consequence of potential conflicts.
• Only keep the plugins you really use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use additional resources.
• Many free plugins often come with very little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing paid WordPress plugins, make sure you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we publish here for more information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before installing it. The WordPress platform changes regularly and older plugins that have not been updated can cause problems.
• Always update your plugins. Outdated plugins not only can create conflicts, they may also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an important element of WordPress and contribute to making it the most powerful, flexible and scalable CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand without spending thousands of dollars on web development costs.

One last thing on the subject of plugins:

If there is any feature you need for your website, you can be sure that a WordPress plugin probably exists that will do exactly what you want, and that it can either be downloaded at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that it will be reasonably inexpensive.

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

And, if by chance this plugin is not available, then a custom plugin that does precisely what you need it to do can probably be coded for your business for a reasonable price.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of WordPress plugins – what plugins are and how they can significantly to improve your website. See our published posts to learn more about usingplugins.

***

***