Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the most powerful advantages of building a web presence with the WordPress software is that you can quickly and easily expand your WordPress web site’s functionality using applications called plugins.

Understanding WP Plugins

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

You download and install an app!

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

(Just like you can find social sharing apps …)

A plugin is really similar to an app. You simply install and activate a software that adds new functionality to your web site …

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

Generally, expanding the functionality of an already-built website involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, this cost can be significant, particularly if it requires website development.

This is also applicable when setting up a new website. Organizations tend to invest in features they probably will never need.

To save money and keep expenses low, we suggest a modular approach when developing a web site and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As you need new features or functionality, add new software modules with only a couple of mouse clicks that integrate with your site, to give your website or blog a completely new range of useful capabilities, and …

3) Cost not a single dollar extra to install on your website?

Well, this is just what a WP plugin allows you to do!

Benefits Of WP Plugins

We began this article by comparing WP plugins with ’apps’. In the same way that many apps are free to download and some apps cost a little money, the same applies with plugins.

In fact, thousands of plugins are freely available for WP users.

WordPress plugins that you purchase 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, because WordPress makes its code publicly available, anyone can create, edit and customize any portion of the code. This has allowed thousands of third-party software development companies to build more new plugins that add new features to the WordPress engine than you can possibly imagine.

• Plugins let you start off with only a simple yet professional website and then add new features and enhancements to your site as necessary.
• WP plugins let you add almost endless features to any site quickly, easily and really inexpensively.
• Plugins give your site almost endless expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow business owners to own a web presence that they can self-manage.
• Most plugins will typically work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to give your website instant new enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins provide more extensive options and require some initial configuration.

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

Just like WordPress themes, loads of great plugins are made available for WordPress users … and many of these great plugins are 100% FREE!

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

As mentioned earlier, you can find plugins that can do almost everything you need done.

There are plugins for:

• Site Administration
• Content Management
• Traffic
• Visitor Interactivity
• Social Connectivity
• Media Management Automation
• Improving Sales Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting Applications
• Site Security

You can add features to a website with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Surveys
• Managing banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• Newsletter subscription forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonials
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site from English to Italian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Offline storage management
• Making pages load faster
• Event management
• Business directories
• Automatically sell advertising on your site
• Set appointments and reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and send you reports
• Redirect URLs
• Monitor social signals
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude specific from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your pages and posts
• Migrate content from non-WordPress applications
• Search and replace data
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize guest comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook discussions)
• Inserting scripts and script elements into your content
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced font display formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add a map of your business location
• Post your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And hundreds of other features!

As it’s clear to see, plugins give you limitless business flexibility. If you plan to build a web site, or your existing web site isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider using WordPress in the future.

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

For example, if you need to protect your content, you can install plugins to make an area of your page inaccessible, or create a full paid membership site with separate login details for users …

As mentioned previously, you can use free plugins to improve your web site in lots of ways. From adding new features that improve your business, your visitors’ experience and your understanding of what is happening on your site …

To extending your business visibility across social media and search engines …

You can also add advanced functionality to your site using inexpensive premium WP plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that integrate and automate features on your pages like managing customer testimonials and event bookings …

And even set up a complete bookings and reservations system on your site … all for a small fraction of the cost of paying programmers to create these functionality for you …

You can also take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that can allow you to engage even more with visitors, customers and registered site members …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site additional exposure).
• Share your content with other web users on social networking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with your team via online forums or even set up a private community on your domain.
• Engage with your support team through live web conferencing and chatrooms
• Dial your business directly from their mobile phones while browsing your website
• Get help via a dedicated user help desk
• And much more …

Finally you, can also integrate complex third-party solutions using a WordPress “front end”. This allows you to manage your business sales and marketing, while the 3rd-party application handles the technological side of things …

WordPress Plugins – Additional Things To Know

• There are so many terrific plugins to choose from. Be careful not to overload your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will begin to affect your website’s resources and site loading speed. It also creates more maintenance issues for you as a result of possible errors.
• Install only those plugins that you really need. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these also utilize resources.
• Many free plugins often receive little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing premium WordPress 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 helpful information.
• If you see that an unsupported plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two or more years), then think carefully before installing it. WordPress updates often and outdated plugins can cause errors.
• Always keep all plugins up-to-date. Outdated plugins not only can create errors and conflicts, they could also have vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, WordPress plugins are an important part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most used content management system available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add instant functionality to their website without spending thousands of dollars on web development costs.

One last thing regarding plugins:

Whatever feature you need for your web presence, you can be sure that a someone has probably already created one that will do what you need it to do, and that it can either be accessed for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the price to buy it will be reasonable.

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

And, if by chance such a WP plugin does not exist, then a custom plugin that does exactly what you need it to do 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 improve your website. See our published posts to learn about more popular WordPress plugins that we recommend using.

***

***