WordPress Plugins Explained

This tutorial explains what WordPress plugins are, how plugins work and how plugins help WordPress users extend their website’s functionality. 

Using WordPress Plugins Extend Your Site's FunctionalityOne of the main features of the WordPress content publishing software is that you can quickly expand your WordPress web site’s functionality using applications called plugins.

What Are Plugins?

Like most of us, you probably use a device like a smart phone. What do you do when you would like access to something new on your device like a new application, game or a new business tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little software application that is really simple and easy to install and adds new features to your mobile device.

A Beginner's Guide To WP Plugins

(Just as you can find social sharing apps …)

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

A Basic Guide To WP Plugins

(… there are also social sharing plugins for WP!)

Typically, adding a new feature to your web site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the features or enhancements are, this can get quite expensive, particularly if website developers have to add new code or modify code or install scripts that integrate into your existing site.

This is also applicable when starting a web site. Companies will often fork out money in advance on features they probably will never need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we recommend a cost-effective approach when setting up your website and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As new features are required, just install new software modules with a few clicks of the mouse that integrate with your site, giving your site a whole new range of features and functionality, and also …

3) Cost not a single cent more to add to your web site?

Well, this is precisely what plugins let you do!

Plugins – Benefits

I began this blog post by comparing plugins with ’apps’. Just like some apps are free to download and some apps cost a little money, so do WP plugins.

In fact, many great plugins are available at no cost to users.

Plugins that cost money are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of paying for web development services to get the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are priced quite low.

Also, since WordPress makes its source code publicly available, anyone can create, edit and customize any portion of the WP code. This has allowed many third-party software development companies to create more tools that work with WordPress than you can imagine.

  • WP plugins allow you to start off with a basic yet professional site and then expand only as required.
  • Plugins allow you to add almost unlimited functionality to your web site easily and inexpensively.
  • Plugins give your website virtually unlimited expanding capabilities.
  • Plugins allow business owners to have a website that they can manage themselves.
  • Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your web site with instant new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
  • Some plugins offer more extensive options and could require some configuration.

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

Like themes, thousands of great plugins are made available for WordPress users … often at no cost!

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

A Basic Guide To WordPress Plugins

As mentioned earlier, you will find plugins that will do almost everything you need your site to do.

There are WP plugins for:

  • Web Site Administration
  • Content Distribution
  • Web Traffic Generation
  • Visitor Engagement
  • Social Media
  • Inserting Media – Video, Graphics & Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
  • e-Commerce And Online Sales & Advertising Automation
  • Improving Website Conversions And Lead Generation
  • Data Analysis Tools
  • WP Optimization

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

  • Contact forms
  • Polls and quizzes
  • Surveys
  • Rotating banners
  • E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, coupons, etc …)
  • Social media integration
  • Membership sites
  • List-building opt-in forms
  • Sales workflow
  • Mobile integration
  • Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
  • Image galleries (with 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 menus
  • Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
  • Media integration
  • Making pages load faster
  • Managing events & bookings
  • Business listing directories
  • Automatically sell spots on your site
  • Set up appointments and reminders
  • Set up reservations and bookings
  • Detect broken links on your pages and send you reports
  • Redirect visitors from old pages to other areas on your site or other websites
  • Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
  • Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
  • Add sitemaps
  • Hide certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
  • Protect content on your posts and pages
  • Migrate content from other CMS platforms
  • Perform bulk content edits
  • Fight SPAM commenting
  • Customize guest commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
  • Insert scripts and script elements into your posts
  • Add and format tables
  • Display animated graphics and advanced text formatting options
  • Create and manage QR codes
  • Improve your local search listings on Google
  • Add a map
  • Distribute your posts automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and others
  • Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
  • Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
  • And so many other features!

As it’s clear to see, WP plugins give you virtually endless business scalability. If you plan to build a web site for your business, or your existing web site wasn’t built using WordPress, then consider using it in the future.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, 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 but not all users, you can install plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a page or post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a complete membership site with customized login details for all users …

A Guide To WordPress Plugins

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

A Guide To Understanding WordPress Plugins

To extending your business reach and visibility across multiple social networks and search engines …

A Guide To WordPress Plugins

You can also add sophisticated features to your site using inexpensive premium WordPress plugins. For example, you can install plugins that automate functions on your website like customer feedback and event registrations management …

A Newbie's Guide To WordPress Plugins

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

A Guide To WP Plugins

You can also take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that will let you engage in various ways with visitors, clients and registered site members …

A Beginner's Guide To Understanding WP Plugins

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, providing you with added exposure).
  • Share your posts with other online visitors on social networking sites.
  • Contact you via contact forms
  • Engage in online discussions with other customers through online forums or even set up a private online community on your domain.
  • Engage with your support team via live webcam conferencing and chatroom facilities
  • Dial your business directly from their devices while browsing your site
  • Get support via a user support helpdesk
  • And much more …

A Guide To Understanding WP Plugins

You can also integrate complex third-party applications with a WP “front end”. This lets you control the content that your visitors will see on your website, while your third-party application handles the technological aspects …

A Guide To WordPress Plugins

Useful Information About WP Plugins

  • There are so many great plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can eventually affect your site’s performance and site loading times. It also creates more maintenance work for you resulting from possible conflicts.
  • Install only those plugins that you really use. Delete any plugins from your site, as these use server resources.
  • Many free plugins typically come with little to no support from the plugin author. When considering paid plugins, make sure 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 some of our WordPress plugin reviews for more information.
  • If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think carefully before using it. WordPress is updated on a frequent basis and older plugins can cause problems.
  • Always keep all plugins updated. Older plugin not only can cause problems, they could also contain security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

A Basic Guide To Understanding WordPress Plugins

As you can see, plugins are an important aspect of WordPress and contribute to making it the most used content management system in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to expand without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web developers.

One last thing regarding WP plugins:

If there is any feature or functionality you need for your web presence, you can be sure that a WordPress plugin probably exists that will do what you need it to do, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be fairly inexpensive.

Whatever you need done, there's a WordPress plugin for that!

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

And, if by chance such a WordPress plugin has not been created yet, then a custom plugin that does exactly what you would like it to do can certainly be developed for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of plugins – what plugins are and how they can significantly to improve your website. See our related posts section to learn about more great plugins that we recommend using.

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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now

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