Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the main features of the WordPress software is the ability to quickly expand your WordPress site’s functionality using plugins.

What Are Plugins?

No doubt, 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 a new productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little software that is simple and easy to install and instantly adds new features and functionality to your smart phone.

(Just as there are social sharing apps …)

A plugin is very much like an app. You simply install and activate a little software application that provides new functionality to your WP website or blog …

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

Generally, adding new features to your website involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the feature or enhancements, this cost can be significant, particularly if web developers have to add new code or edit templates or develop programs to integrate with your existing set up.

This is also applicable when setting up a website or business blog. Businesses will often invest money in advance in additional bells and whistles they may never need.

To keep your business expenses to a minimum, we suggest using a modular strategy to setting up a digital presence presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine being able to:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a basic, professional-looking web site up and running quickly, then …

2) As the need for new features or functionality arises, just install new applications with only a few mouse clicks directly from within your admin panel, giving your site a completely new range of possibilities, and …

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

Well, this is precisely what a WordPress plugin enables you to do!

Benefits Of Using Plugins

I started this post by comparing plugins with smartphone apps. Just like some apps are free to download and some apps cost a little money, the same applies with WP plugins.

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

Plugins that you have to buy are referred to as ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the price of hiring a professional web developer to add the same features and functionality on your site, most Premium plugins cost very little.

Also, because WordPress makes its code publicly available, anybody can create, edit and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has allowed thousands of third-party web developers to enhance and contribute to the WordPresssoftware.

• Plugins let you get started with a basic web presence and then add new features and enhancements to your site only as necessary.
• Plugins allow you to add practically unlimited features to any website easily, quickly and cheaply.
• Plugins give your site almost endless expanding capabilities.
• Plugins allow non-technical website owners to have a digital presence that they can fully manage.
• Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your site immediate enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins are a little more complex and may need some configuring.

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

Like many WordPress themes, tens of thousands of great plugins are available for WP users … often at no cost!

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

As previously mentioned, you can find WP plugins that can do almost anything you can possibly need your website to do.

Plugin categories cover:

• User Administration
• Content Management
• Traffic
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Connectivity
• Media Utilities Automation
• Increasing Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Reporting Tools
• Optimizing Your

For example, you can add features to your website with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• Surveys
• Rotating advertising banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to full e-commerce stores with shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, discount codes, etc …)
• Social media integration
• Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer feedback forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your website from English to Spanish)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer engagement – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your website
• Set up appointments and appointment reminders
• Automate reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and email you reports
• Redirect affiliate pages
• Monitor social conversations
• 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 content on your pages and posts
• Migrate content from different publishing platforms
• Perform bulk content replacements
• Prevent SPAM commenting
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Inserting scripts and script elements into your pages
• Add tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Create and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add business location maps
• Distribute your content automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, coupons, etc …)
• Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As it’s clear to see, WordPress plugins give you endless possibilities. If you are currently planning to build a website, or your existing site was not built using WordPress, then consider getting one in the future, or you will be missing out on some serious features.

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let me show you some practical uses of installing an inexpensive plugin on your web site.

For example, if you need to publish private content, you can use plugins to make an area 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 improve your website in lots of ways. From installing functionality that improve your business, your web users’ experience and your ability to review visitor data …

To extending your site’s reach and visibility across a number of social sites and search engines …

You can also add complex features to your website using relatively inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that automate features on your website like displaying customer testimonials and booking events …

And also set up a custom bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of paying programmers to design similar applications for you …

You can also take advantage of native 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 WP commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout your visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Share your content with other online users on social media.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage online directly with other customers via forums or even set up an online social network on your own domain.
• Engage with members of your team through live video chats
• Call your business directly from their laptops when visiting your website
• Open a support ticket
• And much more …

Finally you, can even integrate sophisticated 3rd-party solutions with a WordPress “front end”. This lets you control the content that your visitors see on your web site, while the third-party application handles the technical functions …

Plugins – Additional Things You Should Know

• There are many awesome plugins available. Be careful not to overload your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will start to affect your website’s performance and site loading times. It also creates more maintenance work for you as a result of potential conflicts and errors.
• Install only those plugins that you really use. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these also consume server resources.
• Many free plugins often come with very little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering paid WP plugins, ensure that you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check our WP plugin reviews for more helpful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a very long time (e.g. two years), then think carefully before installing it. The WordPress application changes on a frequent basis and older WP plugins can cause conflicts.
• Make sure that you always maintain all plugins up-to-date. Outdated plugins not only can create conflicts, they may also have vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an important element of WordPress and contribute to making it the most popular online open source tool in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand quickly without having to spend thousands of dollars on web developers.

One last thing regarding WP plugins:

Whatever feature you need for your web presence, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already authored one that will do just what you need, and that this plugin will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a premium plugin, that the cost to buy it will be very reasonable.

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

And, if by chance such a WordPress plugin does not exist, then a custom plugin that does precisely what you need it to do can probably be developed for your business for a very reasonable price.

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

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