Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the most useful benefits of choosing WordPress is the ability to quickly increase your WP website’s functionality using plugins.

About WP Plugins

No doubt, you most likely have a mobile phone. What happens when you would like to access something new on your phone like a new software or business productivity tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little software application that is really easy to install and integrates new features and functionality into your mobile phone.

(Just like you can find social sharing apps …)

A WP plugin is similar to an app. You simply download and install a little piece of software that provides new functionality to your WP site …

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

Generally, if you plan to expand the functionality of a web site, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancements, this cost can be fairly significant, especially if website developers need to create new code or modify code or install scripts that integrate with your current site.

This is also applicable when setting up a new website or business blog. Companies will often invest money upfront in added features or customizations they may never need.

For this reason, we suggest a modular strategy when growing your website and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As new features and functionality are required, install new software modules with only a couple of mouse clicks that integrate seamlessly with your existing website or blog, giving your website a whole new and expanded range of capabilities and functionality, and …

3) Cost not one cent extra to add to your web site?

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

Benefits Of Plugins

I began this article by comparing plugins with apps. In a similar way that some apps are free to download and some cost a little bit of money, the same is true for plugins.

In fact, loads of powerful plugins can be downloaded and installed on your sites.

Plugins that you purchase are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when you compare these to the price of investing in web development services to get the same functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are generally very inexpensive.

Also, because WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, anyone can create, edit and customize any part of the WP code. This has allowed thousands of professional software developers to build more tools that enhance the WordPress application than you can probably imagine.

• WordPress plugins allow you to start off simply with a basic website and then expand as necessary.
• WP plugins allow you to add almost endless features to any website easily and inexpensively.
• WordPress plugins give you virtually unlimited expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow anyone to have a site that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your site with new enhancements and features.
• Some plugins are slightly more complex and could require some configuration.

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

Just like WP themes, tens of thousands of WordPress plugins are made available for WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

As mentioned earlier, you can find plugins that will do just about anything you need done.

Plugin categories cover:

• Website Administration
• Content Management
• Web Traffic Generation
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Connectivity
• Adding Media – Video, Graphics & Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting Applications
• Securing Your

For example, you can add features to a WP site with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Display banners
• E-commerce (from managing single ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupon codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• List-building subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to Norwegian)
• 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
• Faster page loading
• Managing events & bookings
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your website
• Set appointments and appointment reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect web pages
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Hide pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your pages and posts
• Migrate data from other publishing applications
• Perform bulk data edits
• Block SPAM commenting
• Customize guest discussions (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Inserting scripts and code elements into your pages
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced font display formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add business location maps
• Post your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and many others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you virtually limitless possibilities. If you are planning to build a website, or your existing web site wasn’t built with WordPress, then consider choosing it in the future.

If you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using WP plugins, let me show you how you can benefit instantly by adding a plugin to your 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 your page or post inaccessible, or create a professional membership site with customized login details for all users …

As mentioned previously, you can use free plugins to enhance your web presence in so many ways. From installing functionality that improve your business, your website visitors’ experience and your ability to analyze website data …

To increasing your business visibility across social sites and search engines …

You can also add advanced features to your site using inexpensive premium WP plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that integrate and automate processes on your site like managing customer testimonials and event registration details …

And also run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying web developers to create the same functionality for you …

Additionally, you can take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that will make your site even more interactive …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Post comments on your site (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with additional exposure).
• Share your posts with other web users on social networks.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with other online users using online forums or even set up a private online social network on your domain.
• Engage with members of your team via live web conferencing and chatrooms
• Call your business from their cellphones while browsing your pages
• Open support tickets
• And much more …

You can also integrate sophisticated enterprise applications within a WP “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 areas …

Plugins – Additional Tips

• There are lots of plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with too many plugins, as this will start to affect your site’s resources and page loading speed. It also means more maintenance work for you resulting from possible conflicts and errors.
• Install only the plugins that you really use. Delete all deactivated plugins from your site, as these use resources.
• Many free plugins normally come with very little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing premium plugins, ensure that you check some reviews online and see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check our 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 installing it on your website or blog. The WordPress platform updates regularly and older WP plugins can create errors.
• Always update your plugins. Outdated plugins not only can create problems, they may also have vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

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

One last thing on the topic of WordPress plugins:

If there is any feature or functionality you want for your web site, you can guarantee that a plugin currently exists that will do what you want, and that this plugin will either be available for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the price will be quite affordable.

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

And, if by chance this WP plugin does not exist, then a custom plugin that does just what you need it to do can probably be created for your business at a reasonable cost.

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

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