Tag: What Is A Plugin

One of the most unique advantages of building a website using the WordPress platform is the ability to quickly increase your WordPress website’s functionality using applications called ’plugins’.

What Are Plugins?

No doubt, you most likely own a device like a smart phone. What do you do when you would like to access something new on your phone like a new application, software or a business tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little software application that is simple and easy to install and instantly integrates new functionality into any smart phone.

(Just as there are social sharing apps for mobile devices …)

A plugin is quite similar to an app. You simply download and install a software that provides new functionality to your WordPress site …

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

Generally, if you want to expand the functionality of an already-built website, additional cost is involved. Depending on how complex the new feature or enhancement is, the cost can be significant, particularly if it requires website development.

This also applies when creating a website or business blog. Business owners sometimes invest money in features they probably will never need.

To save money and keep your costs down, we suggest a cost-effective approach to growing your website and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine if you could:

1) Start simply with minimal expense involved. Get your business web presence up and running fast, then …

2) As the need becomes evident, simply add new applications with only a few mouse clicks directly from your dashboard panel, to give your web site a whole new range of capabilities and functionality, and also …

3) Cost not one dollar extra to install on your site?

Well, this is exactly what plugins let you do!

WP Plugins – Benefits & Advantages

Earlier, we compared plugins with ’apps’. In a similar way that some apps are free to download and some may cost a little bit of money, the same applies with plugins.

In fact, thousands of plugins can be downloaded to your website for free.

Plugins that cost money are called “Premium” plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to get similar features and functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins cost very little.

Also, because WordPress makes its code publicly available, any web developer can create, edit and customize any portion of the WP code. This has enabled thousands of third-party software development professionals to create more new plugins that plug seamlessly into WordPress than you can probably imagine.

• Plugins let you start off with just a simple web site and then add new features and enhancements to your site only if necessary.
• Plugins let you add almost endless functionality to any site easily, quickly and very cheaply.
• Plugins give you almost unlimited expansion capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow non-technical website owners to have a website that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will normally work “right out of the box” and only require to be installed and activated to provide your website or blog with immediate capabilities and enhancements.
• Some plugins offer more advanced options and may require some initial configuration.

Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Often) 100% FREE!

Just like WP themes, loads of WP plugins are available to WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

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

There are plugins for:

• Web Site Management
• Content Distribution
• Increasing Site Traffic
• User Engagement
• Social Media
• Uploading Media Files – Video, Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales And Marketing Automation
• Improving Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data And System Monitoring & Reporting Applications
• WP SEO

You can expand a WP site with plugins like:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• Social contests
• Rotating advertising banners
• E-commerce (from managing single ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile conversion
• Improving your site’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User feedback forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change your site’s content from English to Italian)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Media integration
• Faster page loading
• Event management
• Business listing directories
• Automatically sell and manage advertising on your site
• Set up appointments and reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks and send you reports
• Redirect visitors from missing pages to other areas on your site or other websites
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add a site map
• Hide certain from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide page content
• Migrate data from different CMS applications
• Perform bulk content replacements
• Block SPAM
• Customize visitor commenting (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Insert HTML and code elements into your pages
• Add and format tables
• Display animated graphic elements and advanced text formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search results
• Add business location maps
• Distribute your content automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and many others
• Display countdown timers (for scarcity offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display personalized greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you limitless business flexibility. If you plan to build a website or blog, or your existing website isn’t powered by WordPress, then consider getting one in the future, or you will be missing out on some serious functionality.

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WordPress plugins are, let’s take a look at how you can benefit by simply installing an inexpensive plugin on your web site.

For example, if you need to publish content which is only accessible to some but not all users, you can install plugins to make a section of your post or page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a complete paid membership site with separate login details for all users …

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

To increasing your business reach and visibility across many social sites and search engines …

You can also add advanced functionality to your website using inexpensive premium WordPress plugins. For example, you can set up plugins that integrate and automate functionality on your pages such as user feedback and event registrations management …

And even set up a custom-branded bookings and reservations system online … all for a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring web developers to create these applications for you …

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

For example, your web visitors can:

• Leave comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the native WordPress commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with additional exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on social networking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online with your staff through online forums or even set up an online community on your domain.
• Engage with your staff via live webcam conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Call your business directly from their mobile phones when browsing your site
• Get support via a user support helpdesk
• And so much more …

You can also integrate sophisticated “back end” applications with a WordPress “front end”. This enables you to manage the content that your visitors will see on your site, while your third-party application handles the technological side of things …

Additional Information About WordPress Plugins

• There are loads of WordPress plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this can affect your site’s performance and page loading times. It also creates more maintenance work for you as a consequence of potential conflicts.
• Install only those plugins that you really plan to use. Delete any plugins you don’t need from your site, as these use additional resources.
• Many free plugins typically receive little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing premium WP plugins, make sure you check around a little and understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check the plugin reviews we publish on this site for additional useful information.
• If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two or more years), then think carefully before using it on your website or blog. WordPress updates frequently and older plugins that have not been updated can create issues.
• Always update your plugins. Outdated plugins not only can create errors and conflicts, they could also have vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malicious software.

As you can see, plugins are an important element of WordPress and contribute to making it the most used CMS in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand without having to spend thousands of dollars on web development costs.

One last thing on the subject of WP plugins:

Whatever functionality you need for your web site, you can be sure that a someone has probably already authored one that will do just what you need it to do, and that this plugin will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the price will be reasonable.

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

And, if by chance this WP plugin does not exist, then a custom plugin that does precisely what you would like it to do can probably be created for you for a reasonable price.

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

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