Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the most powerful advantages of choosing the WordPress web site management platform is the ability to quickly and easily increase your WP website or blog’s functionality using applications called plugins.

What Are Plugins?

Like most of us, you probably use a smart phone. What happens when you want to access something new on your phone like a new application, software or business tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a software that is really easy to install and instantly adds new functionality to any smart device.

(Just as there are social sharing apps …)

A WP plugin is really similar to an app. You simply install and activate a little piece of software that adds new functionality to your WordPress website or blog …

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

Typically, expanding the functionality of an existing web site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, this cost can be quite significant, especially if website developers have to add new code or modify code or develop scripts that integrate into your existing set up.

This also applies when starting a website or business blog. Businesses sometimes invest money in added bells and whistles they may never need.

To save money and keep your business costs low, we suggest a sustainable approach when developing a online presence presence and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply with minimal expense involved. Get a basic, professional-looking website up and running fast, then …

2) As the need becomes evident, simply install new applications with a few mouse clicks directly from your dashboard panel, giving your site an entirely new range of possibilities, and also …

3) Cost not one cent extra to download and install on your web site?

Well, this is just what plugins let you do!

Benefits Of Using WordPress Plugins

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

In fact, loads of plugins can be downloaded to your site for free.

Plugins that cost money are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of investing in web development services to add the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are priced quite cheaply.

Also, as WordPress is an Open Source application, anybody can create, rewrite and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has allowed many third-party web development professionals to enhance the core WP software application.

• WP plugins let you start off with a simple site and then add new features and enhancements to your site only as necessary.
• WordPress plugins allow you to add practically unlimited features to your web presence quickly, easily and very cheaply.
• WordPress plugins give you practically endless expanding capabilities.
• WP plugins allow business owners to own a site that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your website or blog with immediate capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins can be a little more advanced and may require some initial configuration.

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

Like WP themes, loads of plugins are currently available for WP users … often at no cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find WordPress plugins that can do just about anything you want done.

There are WP plugins for:

• Blog Management
• Content Syndication
• Traffic
• User Interactivity
• Social Monitoring
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Analysis Tools
• Securing Your WordPress Site

For example, you can add features to a WordPress site with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Managing advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring billing, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your site’s content from English to Italian)
• 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
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events
• Business directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your site
• Set client appointments and reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect URLs
• 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.)
• Protect page content sections
• Import information from non-WP applications
• Search and replace content
• Block SPAM
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. display Facebook posts)
• Insert HTML and script elements into your pages
• Add tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map of your business location
• Post your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you limitless possibilities. If you plan to build a website or blog for your business, or your existing web site isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider using it in the future.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WP plugins are, let me show you how you can benefit instantly by simply installing a plugin on your web site.

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

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to enhance your web site in lots of different ways. From adding new features that will improve your business, your site’s user experience and your ability to analyze site data …

To extending your business visibility across various social media and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated features to your site using relatively inexpensive premium WP plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that automate tasks on your website such as displaying customer testimonials and event registration details …

And also run a complete bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying programmers to build custom 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:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with your staff through online forums or even set up a private online community on your domain.
• Engage with your support staff through live chats
• Call your business from their cellphones while visiting your pages
• Get help and support via a dedicated customer help desk
• And much more …

Finally you, can also integrate sophisticated 3rd-party solutions within a WordPress “front end”. This allows you to control the content that your visitors will see on your site, while the 3rd-party application handles the technological side of things …

WordPress Plugins – Additional Things You Should Know

• There are so many plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with too many plugins, as this can affect your site’s performance and page loading times. It also means more maintenance work for you resulting from possible conflicts.
• Install only the plugins that you really use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these also use server resources.
• Many free plugins often come with very little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing premium WP plugins, we recommend that you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check our WP plugin recommendations for more helpful 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 on your website or blog. The WordPress application is updated frequently and older plugins that have not been updated can create conflicts.
• Always upgrade your plugins. Outdated plugin not only can cause errors and conflicts, they could also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malware.

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

One last thing on the subject of plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you need for your web presence, you can be sure that a someone has probably already created one that will do just what you need it to do, and that this plugin can either be downloaded at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the cost to buy it will be reasonable.

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

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

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of WordPress plugins – what plugins are and how they can enhance the functionality of your web site. See our published posts to learn about more useful WordPress plugins that we recommend using.

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