Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the main benefits of choosing WordPress is the ability to easily expand your WordPress website’s functionality using applications called plugins.

What Are Plugins?

Like most of us, you most likely own a smart phone. What do you do when you want access to something new on your device like a new software or tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a little piece of software that is simple and easy to install and immediately integrates new features and functionality into a smart phone.

(Just like you can find social sharing apps for mobile phones …)

A plugin is quite similar to an app. You simply install and activate a little software application that provides new functionality to your WP web site …

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

Typically, if you want to expand the functionality of your website, additional cost is involved. Depending on the complexity of the new features or enhancement, this could get fairly expensive, especially if it involves modifying code.

This is also applicable to developing a new website or business blog. Organizations tend to fork out money upfront on bells and whistles they may not ever need.

To reduce unnecessary expenses, we suggest a sustainable strategy when setting up your digital presence presence and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As the need for new features and functionality becomes evident, add new applications with a few clicks of the mouse directly from within your WP dashboard section, and give your website a whole new and expanded range of possibilities, and …

3) Cost not one dollar more to download and install on your site?

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

Benefits And Advantages Of Using Plugins

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

In fact, many fantastic plugins can be downloaded and installed on your sites.

Plugins that cost money are referred to as “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of investing in professional web development services to add similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins cost very little.

Also, since WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, anybody can create, rewrite and customize any part of the WP code. This has allowed many professional web development professionals to build more tools that enhance WordPress than you can possibly imagine.

• Plugins allow you to start simply with a simple site and then add new features and enhancements to your site as required.
• Plugins let you add practically unlimited functionality to any web site quickly and very cheaply.
• Plugins give your digital business presence practically endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical website owners to have a website that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your web site with immediate capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more extensive features and could require some initial configuration.

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

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

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

As mentioned earlier, you can find plugins that can do almost anything you can imagine.

There are WP plugins for:

• Website Management
• Content Management
• Traffic
• User Engagement
• Social Sharing
• Managing Media Files – Videocasts, Images, Podcasts, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Commerce And Online Sales & Marketing Automation
• Improving Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Reporting
• Optimizing Your WordPress Blog

For example, you can expand your website with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Display advertising banners
• E-commerce (from managing single-item ordering with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site from English to French)
• 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
• Faster page loading
• Managing events
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your blog
• Set client appointments and appointment reminders
• Manage reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
• Redirect visitors from certain pages to other pages on your site or other sites
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Exclude certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your pages and posts
• Import information from different CMS applications
• Perform bulk data replacements
• Fight SPAM
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Insert HTML and script elements into your posts and pages
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map of your business location
• Syndicate your content automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and many others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As it’s clear to see, WP plugins give you virtually limitless possibilities. If you are currently planning to build a web site for your business, or your existing site was not built with WordPress, then consider getting one built on your domain, or you could be missing out on some serious functionality.

In case you’re still wondering about the power and flexibility of using plugins, let me show you how you can benefit instantly by installing a plugin on your site.

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

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to enhance your web presence in so many different ways. From adding functionality that enhance your business, your site’s user experience and your ability to analyze website metrics …

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

You can also add advanced functionality to your site using relatively inexpensive premium WP plugins. For example, you can install plugins that automate functions on your site such as customer testimonial and event registrations management …

And also set up a custom bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying software developers to build similar functionality for you …

You can also take advantage of built-in WordPress commenting features and plugins that will make your site even more interactive …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout your 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 your team through forums or even set up a private social network on your own site.
• Engage with your support staff using live web conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Dial your business from their laptops when browsing your website
• Open a support ticket
• And so much more …

Finally you, can even integrate complex “back end” applications using a WP “front end”. This allows you to manage your business marketing, while the 3rd-party application handles the technological functions …

Useful Tips About Plugins

• There are so many good plugins available. Be careful not to overload your server with too many plugins, as this can begin to affect your website’s performance and page loading times. It also creates more maintenance work for you as a consequence of potential errors.
• Install only the plugins you really need to use. Delete any plugins you don’t use from your site, as these use extra server resources.
• Many free plugins often receive little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing paid plugins, we recommend that you check some reviews online and see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we provide on this site for more information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think twice before using it. WordPress changes frequently and older WP plugins can create issues.
• Always update your plugins. Older plugins not only can cause errors, they could also have vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an important component of WordPress and contribute to making it the most preferred content management system in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add instant functionality to their web presence without having to spend thousands of dollars on web development costs.

One last thing regarding WP plugins:

Whatever feature you want for your web site, you can be sure that a someone has probably already developed one that will do just what you want, and that this plugin can either be downloaded at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that it will be surprisingly inexpensive.

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

And, if by any chance this plugin has not been created yet, then one can probably be written for your business for a reasonable price.

Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of plugins – what plugins are and how they can significantly enhance the functionality of your website. See our related posts section to learn about more great WordPress plugins that we recommend using.

***

***