Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the most useful features of the WordPress software is that you can quickly and easily increase your WP site’s functionality using plugins.

What Are Plugins?

No doubt, you probably own a smart phone. What happens when you would like to access something new on your device like a new game or productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

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

(Just like there are social sharing apps …)

A WordPress plugin is similar to an app. You install a software that provides new functionality to your WordPress website …

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

Typically, adding new features to your web site involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the feature or enhancement, this cost can be significant, especially if website developers have to add new code or modify programs or develop programs to integrate into your current site.

This is also applicable when creating a new website or business blog. Business owners sometimes invest money in advance in bells and whistles they probably will never need.

To reduce unnecessary expenses, we suggest a cost-effective approach to setting up your web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As the need for new capabilities or functionality becomes evident, just install new applications with a couple of mouse clicks directly from within your WP admin area, giving your site an entirely new range of useful functionality, and also …

3) Cost not a single cent extra to download and install on your site?

Well, this is just what plugins allow you to do!

WP Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

We started this blog post by comparing WordPress plugins with ’apps’. In a similar way that many apps are free to download and some apps cost a little bit of money, so do WordPress plugins.

In fact, loads of plugins are available at no cost to users.

WP plugins that you buy are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of paying for web development services to get similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. ”paid”) plugins are priced quite low.

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

• WP plugins allow you to get started with a basic web site and add new features and enhancements to your site if required.
• WP plugins allow you to add practically endless features to any web presence easily, quickly and cheaply.
• Plugins give your online business presence practically unlimited expansion capabilities.
• WP plugins allow ”non-techies” to have a web presence that they can manage.
• Most plugins will normally 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 are slightly more advanced and may require some initial configuration.

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

Like WordPress themes, loads of WordPress plugins are available for WP users … for FREE!

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

As previously mentioned, you will find WordPress plugins that will do just about anything you could imagine.

WordPress plugin categories cover:

• Website Administration
• Content Distribution
• Driving Site Traffic
• User Interactivity
• Social Connectivity
• Media Utilities Automation
• Increasing Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Reporting Tools
• Site Security

For example, you can expand your WP site with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Social contests
• Managing advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonial forms
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your website’s content from English to Spanish)
• 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
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your website
• Set appointments and appointment reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Hide certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide page content
• Migrate information from other CMS applications
• Search and replace content
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. display Facebook posts)
• Insert code and script elements into your posts
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphics 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 posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and others
• Display 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 endless business flexibility. If you are planning to build a website or blog for your business, or your existing web site was not built with WordPress, then consider getting one in the future, or you could be missing out on some serious features.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let me show you how you can benefit by simply installing a plugin on your site.

For example, if you need to publish content which is only accessible to some users, you can use plugins to make a section of your page or post inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a full paid membership site with personal login details for users …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to improve your site in lots of ways. From installing functionality that can enhance your business, your website visitors’ experience and your ability to analyze website metrics …

To extending your site’s visibility across social media and search engines …

You can also add complex features to your site using relatively inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that automate processes on your site like customer feedback and event bookings management …

And also run a custom bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring web developers to build the same applications for you …

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

For example, your visitors can easily:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get shared throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on social media.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online with other users through online forums or even set up an online community on your own domain.
• Engage with members of your team through live webcam conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Call your business from their mobile phones while visiting your website
• Get support via a dedicated user helpdesk
• And so much more …

Finally you, can even integrate complex third-party applications with a WP “front end”. This allows you to control your business marketing, while the third-party application handles the technical aspects …

Additional Things You Should Know About Plugins

• There are lots of plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will affect your website’s performance and page loading speed. It can also create more maintenance work for you as a consequence of possible conflicts.
• Only keep the plugins you really plan to use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these use server resources.
• Many free plugins often come with little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing premium WP plugins, we recommend that you check around a little and understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check some of our plugin reviews for more helpful information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think carefully before using it on your site. The WordPress platform is updated regularly and out-of-date plugins can cause problems.
• Always upgrade your plugins. Outdated plugin not only can cause problems, they could also have vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, plugins are an important feature of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most preferred online open source solution available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add new features to their website without spending thousands of dollars on web developers.

One last thing about plugins:

If there is a feature or functionality you want for your web presence, you can be sure that a plugin already exists that will do just what you want it to do, and that this plugin can either be downloaded for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the cost will be minimal.

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

And, if by any chance this WP plugin is not available, then a custom plugin that does exactly what you need it to do can probably be developed for you at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can improve your web site. See our related posts section to learn about more useful plugins that we recommend using.

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