WordPress Plugins Explained

This tutorial explains what WordPress plugins are, how plugins work and how plugins help WordPress users extend their website’s functionality. 

Using WordPress Plugins To Enhance Your Site's CapabilityOne of the most unique advantages of using the WordPress platform is the ability to quickly and easily expand your WordPress website or blog’s functionality using inexpensive (even completely free) applications called plugins.

Understanding WordPress Plugins

Like most people, you most likely own a device like a mobile phone. What happens when you want to access something new on your device like a new application, game or a business tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a little software application that is very simple and easy to install and instantly adds new functionality to any mobile device.

A Newbie's Guide To WP Plugins

(Just as you can find social sharing apps …)

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

A Guide To Understanding WP Plugins

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

Typically, adding a new feature to an existing site involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the feature or enhancement is, the cost can be significant, especially if it requires modifying code.

This also applies when setting up a web site. Organizations tend to invest money upfront in extra bells and whistles they probably will never need.

To save money and keep expenses low, we suggest using a modular strategy when developing a presence online presence and WordPress plugins are ideal for doing this.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could:

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

2) As more features or functionality are needed, simply add new software modules with only a couple of mouse clicks that integrate with your current web site, giving your website or blog a completely new range of useful features, and …

3) Cost not one cent more to install on your web site?

Well, that’s exactly what a WP plugin allows you to do!

Plugins – Benefits And Advantages

I started this post by comparing plugins with ’apps’. In a similar way that many apps are free to download and some apps may cost a little bit of money, the same applies to WP plugins.

In fact, many fantastic plugins are freely available for WordPress users.

WordPress plugins that you have to buy are referred to as ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when you compare it to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to get the same functionality on your site, most Premium plugins cost very little.

Also, since WordPress makes its source code available to everyone, anyone can create, edit and customize any portion of the WordPress code. This has allowed thousands of third-party web development companies to create more new plugins that enhance the WordPress application than you can probably imagine.

  • WordPress plugins let you get started simply with a basic web site and add new features and enhancements to your site only if required.
  • WordPress plugins let you add practically unlimited features to your web site easily, quickly and inexpensively.
  • WordPress plugins give your site virtually unlimited expansion capabilities.
  • Plugins allow non-technical users to own a web presence that they can fully manage.
  • Most plugins typically work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your site with instant new capabilities and functionality.
  • Some plugins are a little more complex and could require some configuring.

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

Just like WordPress themes, thousands of great plugins are made available to WordPress users … for FREE!

You can download thousands of WP plugins from the Free WP Plugin Directory

A Guide To WordPress Plugins

As mentioned earlier, you will find WordPress plugins that can do just about everything you can imagine.

There are plugins for:

  • Web Site Management
  • Content Management
  • Online Traffic Generation
  • User Engagement
  • Social Connectivity
  • Managing Media – Video, Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
  • e-Commerce And Online Sales Automation
  • Increasing Website Conversions And Lead Generation
  • Data And System Analysis
  • WP Security

For example, you can enhance your website with plugins like:

  • Contact forms
  • Quizzes and polls
  • Surveys
  • Rotating advertising banners
  • E-commerce (from managing single ordering with PayPal buttons, to complete e-commerce stores with online shopping carts, payment processing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
  • Social media integration
  • Membership sites
  • Newsletter opt-in forms
  • Sales funnels
  • Mobile integration
  • Improving your site’s SEO
  • Image galleries (including rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
  • User feedback forms
  • Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your pages from English to German)
  • 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
  • Making pages load faster
  • Event management
  • Business listing directories
  • Automatically sell spots on your blog
  • Set client appointments and appointment reminders
  • Set up reservations and bookings
  • Detect broken hyperlinks and email you reports
  • Redirect users from specified pages to other areas on your site or other sites
  • Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
  • Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
  • Add a site map
  • Exclude specific from showing on areas of your site (e.g. sitemaps, feeds, etc.)
  • Protect content on your posts and pages
  • Import data from non-WordPress applications
  • Perform bulk data replacements
  • Fight SPAM
  • Customize guest discussions (e.g. display Facebook comments)
  • Inserting scripts and code elements into your posts and pages
  • Add tables
  • Add animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
  • Create and manage QR codes
  • Improve Google local search
  • Add a map
  • Publicize your posts automatically on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and many others
  • Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, discount coupons, etc …)
  • Display personal greetings, timed offers, etc …
  • And so much more!

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

If you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible WP plugins are, let’s take a look at some practical uses of installing a plugin on your site.

For example, if you want content protection, you can install plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on your post or page inaccessible, or transform your WordPress site into a complete paid membership site with customized login details for all users …

A Guide To Understanding WordPress Plugins

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

A Guide To WP Plugins

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

A Beginner's Guide To Understanding WP Plugins

You can also add advanced functionality to your site using inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can install plugins that automate functions on your site like displaying customer testimonials and booking events …

A Guide To Understanding WP Plugins

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

A Useful Guide To Understanding WordPress Plugins

You can also take advantage of native WP commenting features and plugins that can make your site even more interactive …

A Basic Guide To WordPress Plugins

For example, your visitors can:

  • Leave comments on your blog posts (which can grow into online discussions) using either the built-in WP commenting feature, or integrated Facebook comments (which then get displayed throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with increased exposure).
  • Bookmark your posts on various social sites.
  • Contact you via contact forms
  • Engage online with other online users through forums or even set up an online community on your site.
  • Engage with members of your team using live chats
  • Call your business from their devices when browsing your site
  • Open support tickets
  • And so much more …

A Beginner's Guide To WordPress Plugins

You can also integrate complex 3rd-party solutions with a WP “front end”. This lets you manage the content that your visitors see on your website, while your 3rd-party application handles the technical aspects …

A Guide To Understanding WordPress Plugins

Useful Tips About Plugins

  • There are so many plugins to choose from. Be careful of overloading your server with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will start to affect your site’s resources and site loading times. It also means more maintenance issues for you resulting from potential errors.
  • Only keep those plugins you really need to use. Delete all inactive plugins from your site, as these utilize additional resources.
  • Many free plugins normally come with little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing paid plugins, we recommend that you check around a little and understand what kind of reputation the developer has when it comes to offering support, updates, new features, etc. Be sure to check our plugin recommendations for more information.
  • If you see that a plugin has not been updated for a while (e.g. two years), then think twice before using it on your website. The WordPress platform updates often and older plugins that have not been updated can create errors.
  • Always upgrade your plugins. Older plugin not only can cause errors, they may also contain vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

A Non-Technical Guide To Understanding WordPress Plugins

As you can see, WP plugins are an important part of WordPress and contribute to making WordPress the most downloaded online management solution in the world. Plugins also provide WordPress users with an easy, simple and inexpensive way to add instant functionality to their web presence without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web development costs.

One last thing about plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you need for your web site, you can be sure that a WP plugin probably exists that will do just what you need it to do, and that it will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the cost to buy it will be minimal.

Whatever you need done, there's a WordPress plugin for that!

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

And, if by chance this plugin is not available, then a custom plugin that does precisely what you would like it to do can certainly be coded for your business at a reasonable cost.

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of WP plugins – what they are and how they can improve your WordPress web site. See our related posts to learn more about usingplugins.

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