Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the most unique features of the WordPress content publishing platform is that you can quickly and easily expand your WP website’s functionality using inexpensive called ’plugins’.

About WordPress Plugins

No doubt, you most likely own a device like a mobile phone. What do you do when you want access to something new on your phone like a new application, game or a new business productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a piece of software that is easy to install and instantly integrates new functionality into any smart device.

(Just as there are social sharing apps …)

A plugin is very similar to an app. You install and activate a little software application that provides new functionality to your website or blog …

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

Generally, expanding the functionality of a web site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, the cost can be quite significant, particularly if it requires website development.

This is also applicable when developing a new website or business blog. Companies tend to spend money up-front on added features they may simply not need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we suggest a cost-effective strategy when developing your website and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As more features are required, simply install new software modules with only a couple of mouse clicks that integrate seamlessly with your web site, giving your website an entirely new range of practical capabilities, and also …

3) Cost not a single dollar extra to install on your website?

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

WordPress Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

Earlier, we compared WordPress plugins with apps. In a similar way that some apps are free to download and some apps cost a little bit of money, the same applies with plugins.

In fact, thousands of powerful plugins are available at no cost to WordPress users.

Plugins that you have to buy are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of paying for professional web development services to get similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins cost very little.

Also, as WordPress makes its code available to everyone, anyone can create, modify and customize any part of the code. This has allowed many professional web developers to enhance and contribute to the WPsoftware.

• Plugins let you start simply with a simple web site and then expand only as necessary.
• Plugins allow you to add practically endless features to your web site easily and really cheaply.
• Plugins give your website virtually endless expanding capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow business owners to own a website that they can manage.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your website with immediate capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins are a little more complex and could require some configuration.

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

Just like WordPress themes, thousands of great WP plugins are available for WP users … and many of these great plugins are 100% FREE!

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

As previously mentioned, you can find plugins that will do almost anything you want done.

There are plugins for:

• User Management
• Content Syndication
• Online Traffic Generation
• User Engagement
• Social Media
• Managing Media – Videocasts, Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting Tools
• Site Optimization

For example, you can expand a business online presence with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Managing banners
• E-commerce (from managing single sales with PayPal buttons, to enterprise scale e-commerce stores with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your pages from English to Norwegian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage management
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your website
• Set appointments and reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Hide certain from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect post content
• Migrate information from other publishing applications
• Search and replace content
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. display Facebook comments)
• Insert HTML and script elements into your website’s header and footer
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add a map
• Post your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and many others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

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

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WordPress plugins are, let me show you some practical advantages of installing a plugin on your website.

For example, if you want to publish private content, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a post or page inaccessible, or create a full membership site with separate login details for all users …

As mentioned before, you can use free plugins to improve your business site in so many ways. From installing new features that will improve your business, your site’s user experience and your ability to analyze visitor data …

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

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your website using relatively inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can install plugins that automate functions on your pages such as managing customer testimonials and booking events …

And also run a custom bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring programmers to code these functionality for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that can enhance your site’s interactivity …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Leave comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with additional exposure).
• Share your content with other web users on social media.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with other customers through online forums or even set up an online community on your own domain.
• Engage with your team using live chats
• Dial your business directly from their smart phones while visiting your website
• Open support tickets
• And so much more …

Finally you, can even integrate complex enterprise applications using a WordPress “front end”. This enables you to control the content that your visitors will see on your website, while the third-party application handles the technological functions …

Additional Information About Plugins

• There are lots of good plugins available. Be careful of overloading your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can start to affect your site’s resources and page loading times. It can also mean more maintenance issues for you resulting from potential errors.
• Install only the plugins that you really use. Delete any plugins from your site, as these use resources.
• Many free plugins typically come with little to no support from the plugin author. When considering premium plugins, we recommend that you do a little research first to understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of our WordPress plugin recommendations for additional information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think twice before installing it on your website. WordPress changes regularly and out-of-date WP plugins can create issues.
• Ensure to always upgrade your plugins to their most recent software version. Older plugins not only can cause errors and conflicts, they may also contain security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most popular content management system in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new functionality to their web presence without having to spend thousands of dollars on web development.

One last thing about WordPress plugins:

Whatever functionality you want for your web presence, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already authored one that will do what you want it to do, and that it can either be downloaded at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be surprisingly affordable.

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

And, if by any chance such a WP plugin is not available, then it can most certainly be coded for you at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can enhance the functionality of your blog. See our published posts to learn more about usingplugins.

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