Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the main benefits of building an online business presence with WordPress is that you can quickly expand your WordPress website’s functionality using plugins.

What Are Plugins?

No doubt, you probably use a cell phone. What happens when you would like to access something new on your phone like a new game or a new business tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a software that is simple and easy to install and immediately adds new features to your smart device.

(Just like there are social sharing apps …)

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

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

Generally, expanding the functionality of your site involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the feature or enhancements, things could get quite expensive, especially if website developers have to add new code or modify programs or develop programs that integrate with your current set up.

This is also applicable when developing a website. Organizations sometimes spend up front on features they may never need.

To reduce your costs, we suggest using a cost-effective strategy to growing your web site and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine if you could:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get your web site up and running quickly, then …

2) As you need more features or functionality, simply install new applications with only a few clicks of the mouse directly from your WordPress admin section, giving your web site an entirely new range of useful features, and also …

3) Cost not a single dollar more to download and install on your website?

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

WordPress Plugins – Benefits & Advantages

Earlier, we compared WordPress plugins with apps. Just like many apps are free to download and some apps cost a little bit of money, the same is true for WP plugins.

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

WordPress plugins that you have to buy are referred to as ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the price of investing in professional web development services to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium plugins are priced quite cheaply.

Also, since WordPress is an Open Source application, anybody can create, modify and customize any part of the WP code. This has enabled many third-party software developers to build more new tools that “plug into” WordPress than you can possibly imagine.

• Plugins let you start simply with just a basic site and add new features and enhancements to your site only if required.
• Plugins let you add practically unlimited features to any web site quickly, easily and inexpensively.
• Plugins give your site almost unlimited expansion capabilities.
• WP plugins allow anyone to have a site that they can manage.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your web site instant new capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins can be slightly more advanced and may require some initial configuration.

WP Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Often) 100% FREE!

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

You can access thousands of plugins from the Free WordPress Plugin Repository …

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

WordPress plugin categories cover:

• Site Management
• Content Syndication
• Driving Web Visitors
• User Engagement
• Social Connectivity
• Media Utilities Automation
• Increasing Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Analysis Tools
• Securing Your

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

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Surveys
• Display advertising banners
• E-commerce (from managing single ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce 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 website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User feedback forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your website from English to Portuguese)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage integration
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your site
• Set up client appointments and reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Hide certain from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect page content sections
• Migrate information from non-WP applications
• Perform bulk content replacements
• Block SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. display Facebook comments)
• Inserting scripts and script elements into your site’s header and footer
• 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
• Post your content automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, WordPress plugins give you practically endless business flexibility. If you are planning to build a web site, or your existing web site wasn’t built with WordPress, then consider getting a WP site or blog built on your domain, or you could be missing out on some serious features.

In case you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using WordPress plugins, let’s take a look at some practical advantages of adding a plugin to your site.

For example, if you want to publish private content, you can use plugins to make a section of your page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full paid membership site with personal login details for all users …

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

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

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your site using inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can purchase plugins that integrate and automate processes on your website such as customer testimonial and event bookings management …

And even run a custom-branded bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying software developers to design similar applications for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WP commenting features and plugins that can let you engage better with your visitors, customers and registered site users …

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your site (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with increased exposure).
• Share your content with other web visitors on various social sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with other customers through forums or even set up a private online community on your own site.
• Engage with members of your team through live chats
• Call your business directly from their cellphones while browsing your site
• Open support tickets
• And so much more …

You can also integrate sophisticated “back end” solutions with a WP “front end”. This lets you control the content that your visitors will see on your site, while your 3rd-party application handles the technological functions …

Additional Information About Plugins

• There are loads of WordPress plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your site with too many plugins, as this can affect your website’s resources and site loading speed. It also means more maintenance work for you as a result of possible errors.
• Only keep the plugins that you really use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these utilize extra resources.
• Many free plugins normally come with little to no support from the plugin author. 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 providing support, updates, new improvements, 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 very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think twice before using it on your site. WordPress is updated on a frequent basis and older plugins that have not been updated can cause problems.
• Always upgrade your plugins. Outdated plugin not only can create errors, they could also contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, plugins are an important aspect of WordPress and contribute to making it the most popular CMS in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add instant features to their website without spending thousands of dollars on web development costs.

One last thing on the topic of plugins:

Whatever functionality you want for your website, you can be sure that a someone has probably already authored one that will do what you want it to do, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the cost will be very reasonable.

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

And, if by chance this WordPress plugin does not exist, then it can certainly be coded for you at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of plugins – what plugins are and how they can significantly expand your business blog. See our published posts to learn more about usingplugins.

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