Author: WP Compendium

One of the most useful advantages of using the WordPress website publishing platform is that you can quickly expand your WordPress site’s functionality using plugins.

What Are Plugins?

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

You download and install an app!

An app is a little software that is easy to install and integrates new functionality into a smart device.

(Just like there are social sharing apps for smart devices …)

A plugin is like an app. You install an application that adds new functionality to your web site …

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

Typically, adding a new feature to your website involves additional cost. Depending on how complex the new features or enhancements are, things can get fairly expensive, especially if it requires modifying code.

This also applies to starting a new website. Business owners often spend up-front on features they may simply not need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we recommend considering a sustainable strategy to setting up your website and WordPress plugins are ideal for helping you achieve this.

Imagine if you could:

1) Start simply and inexpensively. Get a web presence up and running fast, then …

2) As the need arises, install new applications with a few mouse clicks that integrate seamlessly with your current web site, giving your website or blog a whole new range of features and functionality, and also …

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

Well, that’s just what a WordPress plugin enables you to do!

Benefits & Advantages Of Using WP Plugins

Earlier, we compared plugins with mobile apps. Just like many apps are free to download and some apps cost a little money, so do WP plugins.

In fact, thousands of great plugins can be downloaded and installed on your websites.

Plugins that you have to buy are referred to as Premium plugins. The good news, is that when compared to the cost of hiring a professional web developer to add the same functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are priced quite low.

Also, since WordPress distributes its software as an Open Source application, anybody can create, edit and customize any part of the WP code. This has enabled many third-party web development professionals to build more new plugins that expand WordPress than you can imagine.

• Plugins allow you to get started with only a basic yet professional web site and then add new features and enhancements to your site only when necessary.
• WP plugins let you add practically unlimited functionality to any web site quickly, easily and inexpensively.
• Plugins give your web site practically endless expansion capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow non-technical users to own a site that they can manage themselves.
• Most plugins will work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to give your web site new capabilities and functionality.
• Some plugins are slightly more complex and require some initial configuring.

WordPress Plugins – Powerful, Flexible … And (Many Are) 100% FREE!

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

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

As previously mentioned, you can find WordPress plugins that will do almost everything you could possibly want a site to do.

Plugin categories cover:

• Web Site Management
• Content Distribution
• Online Traffic Generation
• Visitor Engagement
• Social Monitoring
• Inserting Media – Videos, Images, Audio, Multimedia, etc.
• e-Biz And Online Sales And Advertising Automation
• Increasing Sales And Opt-In Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Analysis
• Securing Your

You can expand a website with plugins like the following:

• Contact forms
• Polls and quizzes
• User Surveys
• Rotating ad banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single sales with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce with online shopping carts, invoicing, recurring billing, discount codes, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Private Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales funnels
• Mobile integration
• Improving your website’s SEO
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• User testimonial forms
• Language translation plugins (e.g. you can instantly change all content on your site from English to Spanish)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Cloud storage management
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events
• Business directories
• Automatically sell and manage spots on your blog
• Set up client appointments and reminders
• Help customers make reservations and bookings
• Detect broken hyperlinks on your pages and email you reports
• Redirect users from missing pages to other pages on your site or other websites
• Monitor what social media users are posting about your business
• Make your pages available for printing or downloading as PDF
• Add a site map
• Hide pages from displaying on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Protect content on your pages and posts
• Import data from non-WP platforms
• Search and replace data
• Prevent SPAM
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. displaying Facebook posts)
• Inserting scripts and script elements into your site’s header or footer
• Add and format tables
• Add animated graphic elements and advanced content formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve Google search
• Add a map
• Post your posts automatically on social pages like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and others
• Show countdown timers (for expiring offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so many other features!

As you can clearly see, plugins give you endless business scalability. If you plan to build a website or blog for your business, or your existing site was not built with WordPress, then consider choosing it in the future.

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

For example, if you want content protection, you can use plugins to make just a couple of paragraphs on a page inaccessible, or create a complete membership site with customized login details for each member …

As mentioned previously, free plugins can be used to enhance your web presence in lots of ways. From adding features that improve your business, your visitors’ experience and your ability to analyze site metrics …

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

You can also add advanced functionality to your site using relatively inexpensive paid plugins. For example, you can buy plugins that integrate and automate functions on your pages such as displaying customer testimonials and event bookings …

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

You can also take advantage of native WordPress commenting features and plugins that can increase your site’s interactivity …

For example, your web visitors can:

• Post comments on your blog posts (which can turn into online discussions) using either the built-in WordPress commenting function, or integrated Facebook comments (which are then shared throughout the visitors’ Facebook pages, giving your site added exposure).
• Bookmark your content on social networking sites.
• Contact you using contact forms
• Engage in online discussions with other customers through forums or even set up a private social network on your own domain.
• Engage with your staff via live webcam conferencing and chatroom facilities
• Call your business directly from their devices when browsing your site
• Get support via a user support helpdesk
• And so much more …

Finally you, can even integrate complex third-party applications with a WordPress “front end”. This allows you to control your business sales and marketing, while the 3rd-party application handles the technical side of things …

Some Useful Things You Should Know About WP Plugins

• There are many fantastic plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will begin to affect your site’s resources and site loading speed. It also creates more maintenance work for you as a consequence of potential errors.
• Only keep those plugins you really need. Delete all deactivated plugins from your site, as these also consume server resources.
• Many free plugins often receive very little to no support from the plugin developer. When choosing premium plugins, make sure you check some reviews online and understand what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to providing support, updates, new improvements, etc. Be sure to check 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 is updated on a frequent basis and older plugins that have not been updated can cause problems.
• Ensure to always upgrade your plugins to the latest version. Outdated plugins not only can cause errors and conflicts, they may also contain security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and malicious users.

As you can see, WP plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most downloaded CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to expand quickly without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web development.

One last thing on the topic of WordPress plugins:

If there is any functionality you want for your web presence, you can guarantee that a someone has probably already authored one that will do exactly what you want it to do, and that this plugin will either be available at no cost, or if it’s a paid plugin, that it will be surprisingly inexpensive.

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

And, if by chance this plugin does not exist, then one can certainly be created for you at a reasonable cost.

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

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