Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the most powerful benefits of building a web presence with the WordPress software is the ability to quickly expand your WordPress site’s functionality using plugins.

Understanding Plugins

Like most people, you most likely use a device like a smart phone. What do you do when you want access to something new on your phone like a new application, software or business tool?

Why, simple … you download and install an app!

An app is a piece of software that is simple and easy to install and adds new functionality to any mobile phone.

(Just as you can find social sharing apps …)

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

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

Normally, adding new features to a website involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, things could become fairly expensive, especially if it requires website development.

This is also applicable to developing a new website. Many organizations will often spend upfront on added features they probably will never need.

As part of sound strategic business planning, we suggest a sustainable approach to growing your website and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine if you could:

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

2) As more features become necessary, you can add new applications with a few clicks of the mouse directly from your WordPress admin area, giving your website or blog a whole new and expanded range of capabilities and functionality, and …

3) Cost not a single dollar extra to add to your site?

Well, that’s just what WordPress plugins let you do!

WordPress Plugins – Benefits & Advantages

Earlier, we compared plugins with mobile apps. In a similar way that some apps are free to download and some cost a little money, so do plugins.

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

Plugins that you buy are called Premium plugins. The good news, is that when you compare these to the cost of investing in professional web development services to get similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins cost very little.

Also, as WordPress is an Open Source application, anybody can create, edit and customize any part of the WordPress code. This has enabled thousands of third-party software development professionals to enhance the WordPresssoftware.

• Plugins allow you to start off with just a basic website and then expand as necessary.
• WordPress plugins let you add practically endless functionality to your web presence quickly and cheaply.
• WP plugins give you practically endless expansion capabilities.
• Plugins allow ”non-techies” to have a web presence that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your website or blog with instant new enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins can be a little more advanced and may need some configuring.

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

Like many themes, tens of thousands of WP plugins are available to WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you can find plugins that can do just about everything you could think of.

There are plugins for:

• User Administration
• Content Syndication
• Traffic
• User Engagement
• Social Monitoring
• Media Utilities Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data & System Analysis Applications
• Securing Your

For example, you can add features to a business online presence with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Display advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your site’s content 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.
• Media integration
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events
• Niche directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your blog
• Set appointments and reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and send you reports
• Redirect web links
• Monitor social conversations
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Hide certain from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide page content
• Import content from non-WP platforms
• Search and replace content
• Fight SPAM commenting
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook comments)
• Insert code and code elements into your pages
• Add formatted tables
• Add animated graphics and advanced text formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add a map of your business location
• Publicize your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and others
• Show countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you practically limitless business flexibility. If you are currently planning to build a web site, or your existing site isn’t built with 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 uses of adding a plugin to your site.

For example, if you want to protect your content, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on your page inaccessible, or create a full membership site with customized login details for users …

As mentioned before, free plugins can be used to improve your web presence in lots of ways. From adding functionality that can enhance your business, your website visitors’ experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

To increasing your site’s reach and visibility across multiple social media and search engines …

You can also add sophisticated functionality to your website using inexpensive premium WordPress plugins. For example, you can download plugins that integrate and automate processes on your website like customer testimonial and event registration management …

And also run a custom bookings and reservations system online … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying programmers to build similar applications for you …

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

For example, your visitors can:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with additional exposure).
• Bookmark your content on bookmarking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online with other users through forums or even set up a private online community on your own site.
• Engage with your staff through live video chats
• Call your business from their devices while visiting your pages
• Open support tickets
• And so much more …

Finally you, can also integrate sophisticated “back end” applications with a WordPress “front end”. This lets you control your business sales and marketing, while your 3rd-party application handles the technical functions …

Additional Tips About Plugins

• There are loads of useful plugins available. Be careful of overloading your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will affect your website’s performance and site loading speed. It can also mean more maintenance issues for you as a result of potential conflicts.
• Install only the plugins you really plan to use. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these utilize extra resources.
• Many free plugins often receive very little to no support from the plugin author. When choosing premium plugins, we recommend that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check some of the plugin reviews we publish here for additional useful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two or more years), then think carefully before using it. WordPress updates regularly and older plugins that have not been updated can cause issues.
• Ensure to always maintain your plugins up-to-date. Older plugins not only can cause conflicts, they could also have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, WP plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most used web open source application available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add instant features to their website without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web development costs.

One last thing about WordPress plugins:

If there is a functionality you need for your web presence, you can be sure that a someone has probably already developed one that will do what you need, and that this plugin can either be accessed for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the price to buy it will be minimal.

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

And, if by chance such a plugin has not been created yet, then it can probably be coded for you at a reasonable cost.

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

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