Author: WP Compendium

One of the most powerful benefits of building a website using the WordPress platform is the ability to quickly and easily increase your WordPress site’s functionality using plugins.

What Are Plugins?

Like most people, you probably have a device like a mobile phone. What do you do when you would like access to something new on your device like a new software or business productivity tool?

You download and install an app!

An app is a piece of software that is easy to install and immediately integrates new features and functionality into any mobile phone.

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

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

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

Generally, expanding the functionality of a website involves additional cost. Depending on the complexity of the features or enhancement, the cost can be significant, particularly if website developers have to add new code or edit templates or install scripts that integrate into your existing site.

This also applies when starting a new web site. Business owners sometimes fork out money upfront on extra features and customizations they may simply not need.

For sound, strategic business planning reasons, we suggest using a modular strategy to setting up a web site and WP plugins are ideal for doing this.

Imagine being able to:

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

2) As the need for new capabilities and functionality arises, simply add new applications with a couple of mouse clicks directly from within your admin section, giving your website a completely new and expanded range of features and functionality, and also …

3) Cost not one dollar more to add to your website?

Well, this is precisely what a plugin lets you do!

Plugins – Benefits

Earlier, we compared plugins with smartphone apps. Just like some apps are free to download and some apps may cost a little bit of money, the same applies with plugins.

In fact, thousands of great plugins can be downloaded to your site at no cost.

WordPress plugins that you purchase are called ’Premium’ plugins. The good news, is that when you compare the cost of buying a Premium WP plugin to the price of hiring a professional web developer to add similar functionality on your site, most Premium (i.e. paid) plugins are priced quite low.

Also, since WordPress makes its code available to everyone, any web developer can create, edit and customize any portion of the code. This has enabled thousands of professional software development professionals to build more new applications that work seamlessly with the WordPress engine than you can possibly imagine.

• Plugins let you start off with only a simple yet professional web site and then add new features and enhancements to your site when required.
• WordPress plugins let you add practically unlimited features to your web site easily and cheaply.
• WordPress plugins give you practically unlimited expanding capabilities.
• WordPress plugins allow business owners to have a website that they can manage.
• Most plugins normally work “right out of the box” and only require installation and activation to provide your site with immediate capabilities, enhancements and functionality.
• Some plugins can be a little more advanced and may require some initial configuring.

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

Like themes, tens of thousands of great WP plugins are available for WordPress users … often at $0 cost!

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

As mentioned earlier, you will find plugins that can do almost everything you could imagine.

WordPress plugin categories cover:

• Website Management
• Content Distribution
• Driving Web Visitors
• User Interactivity
• Social Engagement
• Media Utilities Automation
• Increasing Website Conversions And Lead Generation
• Data Monitoring & Reporting
• Securing Your WP Website

For example, you can enhance your WP site with plugins such as:

• Contact forms
• Quizzes and polls
• User Surveys
• Managing banners
• E-commerce (from setting up single-item sales with PayPal buttons, to full scale e-commerce with shopping carts, invoicing, recurring payments, coupons, etc …)
• Social sharing buttons
• Membership sites
• List-building opt-in forms
• Sales workflow
• Mobile integration
• Improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization
• Image galleries (with rotating images, lightboxes, etc.)
• Customer testimonial forms
• Language translation (e.g. you can instantly change your site’s content from English to Portuguese)
• Statistical reporting (e.g. number of visitors, pages visited, keywords searched, etc.)
• Custom navigation menus
• Customer interactivity – contest, live chat, currency conversion, etc.
• Cloud storage integration
• Making pages load faster
• Managing events
• Business directories
• Automatically sell spots on your site
• Set client appointments and appointment reminders
• Set up reservations and bookings
• Detect broken links and send you reports
• Redirect website links
• Monitor what other sites are posting about your business
• Make your pages printable or downloadable as a PDF file
• Add sitemaps
• Exclude pages from showing on areas of your site (e.g. site maps, feeds, etc.)
• Hide content on your posts and pages
• Migrate information from other publishing applications
• Perform bulk data replacements
• Fight SPAM
• Customize visitor comment displays (e.g. display Facebook comments)
• Insert HTML and code elements into your posts
• Add tables
• Display animated graphics and advanced content formatting options
• Add and manage QR codes
• Improve your local search listings on Google
• Add business location maps
• Post your content automatically on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and others
• Display countdown timers (for expiring offers, discount coupons, etc …)
• Display custom greetings, timed offers, etc …
• And so much more!

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

In case you’re still wondering just how powerful and flexible plugins are, let me show you some practical advantages of installing a plugin on your website.

For example, if you need content protection, you can install plugins to make a section of a page or post inaccessible, or create a complete paid membership site with customized login details for all users …

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

To increasing your site’s visibility across 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 functionality on your website such as 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 hiring web developers to code custom functionality for you …

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

For example, your visitors can:

• Post 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 shared throughout a visitors’ Facebook pages, providing you with added exposure).
• Bookmark your posts on social networking sites.
• Contact you via contact forms
• Engage online directly with your team members using forums or even set up a private online social network on your own site.
• Engage with your team through live webcam conferencing and chatrooms
• Call your business directly from their laptops while browsing your site
• Get support via a dedicated customer helpdesk
• And so much more …

Finally you, can also integrate sophisticated “back end” applications with a WordPress “front end”. This enables you to control your business marketing, while your third-party application handles the technical side of things …

Useful Tips About Plugins

• There are so many plugins available. Be careful not to overload your site with an excessive amount of plugins, as this will begin to affect your site’s performance and page loading speed. It also means more maintenance work for you as a consequence of possible conflicts and errors.
• Only keep the plugins that you really need. Delete inactive plugins from your site, as these utilize extra server resources.
• Many free plugins often come with little to no support from the plugin developer. When considering paid WordPress plugins, make sure you do a little research first to see what kind of reputation the plugin developer has when it comes to offering support, upgrades, new features, etc. Be sure to check our plugin recommendations for more expert 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 on your website. The WordPress platform changes on a frequent basis and older plugins can create conflicts.
• Always upgrade your plugins to their most recent software version. Outdated plugins not only can cause issues, they could also have vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and malware.

As you can see, plugins are an integral part of WordPress and contribute to making it the most popular CMS available. Plugins also provide WordPress users with easy, simple and inexpensive ways to add instant functionality to their web presence without spending thousands of dollars on outsourced web development.

One last thing regarding WP plugins:

Whatever feature or functionality you want for your web site, you can be sure that a plugin probably exists that will do exactly what you want it to do, and that it can either be accessed for FREE, or if it’s a paid plugin, that the cost will be minimal.

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

And, if by any chance such a plugin is not available, then one can probably be coded for your business for a very reasonable price.

Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of plugins – what they are and how they can significantly enhance the functionality of your business blog. See our published posts to learn more about usingplugins.

***

***